
Class TT-]<^J 
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PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION 1915. 



Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions, 
''^ House of Representatives, ^ 

Tuesday^ January 10^ 1911. 

The committee this day met at 10.15 o'clock a. m., Hon. William 
A. Rodenberg (chairman) presiding. 

The Chairman. The committee will be in order. Gentlemen of the 
committee, there are two bills pending before this committee relating 
to a proposed exj)Osition to commemorate the opening of the Panama 
Canal in 1915. One of these bills was introduced by Mr. Kahn on 
December 6, 1909. and provides for the location of the exposition at 
San Francisco. The other bill was introduced on December 14, 1910, 
by Mr. Estopinal, and fixes the location of the exposition at New 
Orleans. This meeting has been called for the purpose of giving these 
gentlemen a hearing on their respective bills, and inasmuch as Mr. 
Kahn's bill antedates that of Mr. Estopinal, he is entitled to be heard 
first. The committee will be glad to hear from Mr, Kahn. 

STATEMENT OF HON. JULIUS KAHN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CON- 
GRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. 

Mr. Kahn. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, it is 
true that on December 6. 1909, I introduced H. R. 12285, providing 
for the celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal by an 
international exposition at San Francisco. The bill provides for the 
appropriation of $5,000,000. In the early part of 1910 the citizens 
of San Francisco held a mass meeting in the Merchants' Exchange 
and within two hours subscribed among themselves $4,089,000. It 
became evident to the directors of the exposition company that every 
dollar that would be required to finance the exposition at San Fran- 
cisco could be raised in that community and throughout the State of 
California. Within a short period after this mass meeting $7,500,000 
had been raised by subscriptions from the people of San Francisco, 
and I may say that every dollar of that is collectible and can be 
secured hj the exposition company whenever the exposition company 
is ready to call upon the subscribers for it. 

Subsequently the legislature met in extra session, and the people 
of the State of California were given an opportunity to raise 
$5,000,000 by direct taxation, which was provided for in a constitu- 
tional amendment which was submitted to the people of the State 
on the 8th of last November, and by a vote of 5 to 1 every county in 
the State, with the exception of two, having voted for it, it was 
adopted by the people of that State. Another constitutional amend- 
ment allowed the city of San Francisco to bond itself for $5,000,000 
for this exposition, and that also was carried in the State by a vote 
of 5 to 1, and subsequently the city of San Francisco, at a special 

73172—11 1 



2 PROPOSED PANAMA CAN AX, EXPOSITION, 1915. .^ ^ \ 

"^ . r^ Ov^V ~(> 
election, by a vote of 20 to 1, agreed to bond itself to the amoun-^ o^ ' 
$5,000,000. So that we have in all $17,500,000 for the purposes of the 
exposition at San Francisco. 

In view of that financial backing we feel that we do not desire a 
dollar from the Government of the United States. We do not desire 
to have you consider this bill at all. We ask that it be allowed to 
die upon your files. 

The Chairman. We will now proceed with the hearing on H. E. 
29362, introduced by Mr. Estopinal. 

STATEMENT OF HON. ALBERT ESTOPINAL, A REPRESENTATIVE 
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA. 

Mr. Estopinal. Mr. Chairman, this is the bill introduced by my- 
self on the 14th of December providing for an exposition at New 
Orleans. This bill calls for an appropriation of $1,000,000, but it is 
for Government buildings. We have raised a sufficient amount to 
produce an exposition in New Orleans. By a constitutional amend- 
ment we have raised six and one-half millions, and we have now sub- 
scribed over $2,000,000 besides. The agreement that was entered 
into, and in which my friend, Mr. Kahn, acquiesced, or, rather, he 
proposed it himself, was that each of these two cities produce seven 
and one-half millions. We have done that. We went before the 
Committee on Foreign Affairs with Mr. Kahn, but we were forced 
there. We believed that this committee was the committee that 
had jurisdiction in the matter of expositions. Therefore we have 
prepared a bill and introduced it, and we have now a large delegation 
from Louisiana who desire to be heard upon this proposition. We 
have the governor of the State, the mayor of the city of New Orleans, 
and a large delegation of merchants and business men of our State, 
who will now present the case to this committee. The first speaker 
to be introduced will be the governor of the State, Gov. Sanders, who 
will explain our position. [Applause.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. J. Y. SANDERS, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE 

OF LOUISIANA. 

Gov. Sanders. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, we 
have come before you to-day to urge a favorable report by your 
-committee on the bill introduced last December by Gen. Estopinal. 
Some time ago, in this very room, there was a meeting of the Foreign 
Affairs Committee which we had the pleasure of attending and mak- 
ing our position as clear as we could to that committee under the 
'Circumstances. I remember upon that occasion when we were argu- 
ing the claims of New Orleans for this exposition we had up here 
the entire State and city governments, the lieutenant governor, and 
the senate, the speaker, and the membership of the house, the gov- 
ernor of the State, the mayor of the city, and practically all of the 
city officials. We stated at that time, Mr. Chairman, that while we 
did not know as to whether that was the proper committee for us to 
present our claims to, yet we came because we had been invited to 
come, and it was no trouble at all for us in Louisiana to come to 
Washington; and we stated we would be glad to come back to be 
present at any other committee hearings whenever the time and the 



A/ 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL. EXPOSITION, 1915. 3 

occasion arose. So, Mr. Chairman, we are back here to-day appear- 
ing before your committee, which we think to be the proper com- 
mittee, with at least 150 of the men of Louisiana foremost in her 
professional, banking, commercial, agricultural, and political life. 
It was absolutely no trouble for us to come to Washington, and it 
will be absolutely no trouble for the people of the United States to 
come to New Orleans should we get the exposition. We are so close 
to the center of population, we are so close to the great centers of 
where the people of this Union reside, that it is no trouble for us to 
come to you or for you to come to us. 

The question of whether an exposition ought to be held is one 
which I think ought to be discussed for just a moment. When Co- 
lumbus sailed the waters of the western sea, it was not done to dis- 
cover America, but a western passage to the Indies, and when the 
genius and the money of the American people by the digging of the 
Panama Canal makes true the dream of Columbus, then it does 
strike me that, when this most stupendous undertaking in all the 
files of time is accomplished, when, by the genius of our people, the 
sweat, the blood, and the money of this country of ours shall have 
caused the waters of the Atlantic to meet and mingle with those of 
the Pacific; when the western passage shall have been discovered, it 
looks to me like this Nation ought to celebrate that event. 

Why ought we to celebrate it, Mr. Chairman? Because there is 
not any feat of man of which history records any evidence at all 
that approaches it in its stupendous importance to the human race. 
Therefore, when a people shall have done a deed of that kind, it is 
meet and proper that some celebration of such an event should be had. 

What form should this celebration take? We, in Louisiana, be- 
lieve that it ought to take the form of a great international exposi- 
tion ; and why ? We believe that the digging and the opening of this 
canal necessarily will bring the peoples of the earth together at some 
central point where commodity and produce and idea can be ex- 
changed one with the other, to celebrate with a world's fair. We 
believe this because we take it that this canal was primarily built 
for commerce and not for war ; we take it that the American people 
put their very being behind this undertaking in order to make it 
possible that the peoples of the earth might more readily trade 
their surplus commodities one with the other. We do not believe 
that the idea that was in the American mind when this undertaking 
was had was war or glory or conquest, save the war that is carried 
on for the world's commerce, save the glory that may be had when 
one nation excels another in its products and its commodities, save 
the conquest that may be had by us of the markets of the earth. We 
believe that that canal has been dug for commercial purposes, and 
believing that, we think that the proper way that the completion 
thereof should be celebrated is by having an exposition which will 
tend to create and make commerce for you and for me. 

A great deal has been said about who originated the idea of an 
exposition. We claim that we people of New Orleans were the very 
first to suggest to the Nation the idea of the celebration of the open- 
ing of the Panama Canal. Our friends from San Francisco state 
that they first suggested it, and yet, when we read their suggestion, 
it is merely a suggestion to celebrate the four hundredth anniver- 



4 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

sary of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean by Balboa, and nothing 
about the Panama Canal. But be that as it may. If New Orleans — 
and I believe she justly is entitled to the credit for first having 
thought of the celebration of the opening of the Panama Canal — 
if we have any credit for that, so well and so good. If California 
first suggested it, I say in all frankness the credit is due to San 
Diego and not San Francisco, because the city of San Diego was the 
first city of California that suggested holding a Panama exposition. 
But we do not take the position that the little boy did when his 
mother called him in out of the rain. He replied to his mother that 
he was there first, to make the rain go away. We do not take that 
position at all. The proposition that we are going to lay before you 
and ask you to consider is, first, Shall the opening of the Panama 
Canal be celebrated? Second, Shall it be celebrated by an inter- 
national exposition? Answering, for the sake of argument, both' 
of those questions in the affirmative, then we get to the gist of the 
matter, Where shall this celebration be held ? 

As I understand from Mr. Kahn this morning, he has asked you 
gentlemen to let his bill die on your desks. We ask you, gentlemen, 
on the contrary, to breathe the breath of life into our bill that is 
lying on your desks. We do not want this exposition to die, neither 
do we want it to be a local exposition. If this is a matter of na- 
tional importance, then, Mr. Chairman, it is worthy of national con- 
sideration. If this is a matter of such importance that all the peo- 
ples of the earth should be asked to come together at a given point, 
then it is worthy of national consideration and national supervision, 
and the bill that you are called upon to consider, introduced by Gen. 
Estopinal, does put the control of this exposition at New Orleans 
in the hands and under the direction of the National Government, 
who, when it invites the powers of the earth to take part in this 
exposition, makes itself responsible for the entertainment of the peo- 
ples of the earth. And it is right and proper that this exposition 
should be under the supervision of the National Government. 

It is right and proper that you should have control of the matter, 
and we are not taking the position that the National Government 
should not make an exhibit at this fair ; we are not taking the posi- 
tion that the National Government should not do at this exposition 
just what it is asking all the other peoples of the earth to do. AVhen 
you have an exposition, and you, through the President of these 
United States, ask the other powers to take part in that celebration, 
you are asking them to make an appropriation out of their funds 
to see to it that their people are properly represented at this 
fair, and I take it that you, the hosts, would at least do as much as 
what you would expect your guests to do. We do not offer to pay 
for an exhibit for the United States of America. New Orleans is 
an important city, Mr. Chairman. New Orleans is one of the great 
cities of this Union. But it is not the United States. No other city 
is the United States, and no city has ,i right to assume that the 
United States is unable or unwilling to make an exhibit out of its 
funds at any exposition that it may invite the powers of the earth 
to participate in. This is a national affair. If you invite England 
and Germany, and France, and Japan, and China, and Spain, and 
Turkey, and all the other nations, and all the peoples, to come 
together and show what they have, then we say to you frankly, we 



PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL, EXPOSITION, 1915. 5 

expect jou to show what you have by an appropriation made out of 
your funds, and we believe in the bottom of our hearts that San 
Francisco expects the same. [Applause.] We do not offer to pay 
for your exhibit. Whenever the United States Government asks 
us of Louisiana to assume that burden, then we will consider it ; but 
we are not going to take it for granted that the Government is a 
mendicant for favors at our hands. 

We have in the neighborhood of $10,000,000 raised for this fair. 
San Fi'ancisco has in the neighborhood of $17,000,000. The great 
argument that I hear on all sides, and have been hearing ever since I 
first came to Washington in March last, in this matter — and this I 
believe is my fourth trip — is a question of money, a question of dol- 
lars, a question of who can put up the most coin. When we first 
came here we found a bill introduced by Mr. Kahn calling for a 
$5,000,000 appropriation by the National Government. We thought 
that was the limit. We went back home and we met it. Our legisla- 
ture was in regular session. We provided by constitutional amendment 
enough tax to complete a fund of $5,000,000. Then, when the For- 
eign Affairs Committee met the proposition was made that it would 
take seven and one-half millions of dollars to get the fair. Our Rep- 
resentative, Gen. Estopinal, standing outside the door, was told that 
the people of Louisiana would have to meet this sum if they wanted 
the exposition. He immediately, upon his own authority, stated that 
the people of Louisiana would raise the seven and one-half millions 
of dollars. Thereupon, as you remember, the committee reported to 
the House that neither city or State be considered unless it would 
raise seven and one-half millions of dollars. Gen. Estopinal came 
home immediately upon the close of your session, stated to the people 
in mass meeting what he had pledged their faith to, an extra ses- 
sion of the legislature was immediately called by myself, and addi- 
tional constitutional amendments were proposed and submitted to 
the people by wdiich the tax would realize six and one-half millions 
of dollars instead of five millions. 

Now we are met with the proposition again, " Why, we have 
$17,000,000, but you all have only in the neighborhood of nine or ten. 
It should go to the highest bidder." I do not think so. But, admit- 
ting that it should, I make the statement that we have as much money 
raised and available for exposition purposes as San Francisco has, 
or will have, when she raises her $17,000,000. [Applause.] We have 
as much money as San Francisco has. or will have, for in the end a 
dollar is only what it will buy; and $17,000,000 in San Francisco 
represents approximately no greater purchasing power than $10,- 
000,000 in New Orleans. [Great applause.] The cost of your trans- 
portation, the price of your material, the price of your living is an 
average of from 65 to 75 per cent greater than it is in the city of 
New Orleans, and therefore $17,000,000 in that city represents prac- 
tically no more than ten millions does in our city. 

But, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I go further 
than that. I say that when you are locating an exposition for the 
people of the world you ought to consider where the people would 
like to go, where they can go, and where they will go. If there is 
anj^thing that the American people want to-day it is the trade of 
South and Central America. 



6 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Ninety per cent of that trade to-day is controlled by Europe, and 
only 10 per cent by us. That trade belongs to North America. We 
ought to have it ; we must have it in the years to come. One of the 
things that I can see in the building of this Panama Canal is greater 
and better trade relationship with our sister republics of the South. 
I believe that in the years to come, by and through that canal, we can 
and will control that trade. We want the Latin people of South 
and Central America to begin to know us and to begin to trade with 
us rather than to send their goods and their good will across the 
ocean. When we invite the people of South and Central America to 
meet at New Orleans we are not inviting them to a foreign shore 
nor to a city that they know not of. Most all the people that lie 
south of us are of Latin descent. They are Latin in race, in religion, 
in language, and in instinct. Louisiana itself was at one time a Latin 
Province, governed by Spanish and French laws. The very gentle- 
man who introduced this bill into this House is of Spanish ancestry, 
and when the people of South and Central America visit New Or- 
leans at this fair they visit a people where the surroundings are the 
same as those they have left at home, where they can hear the same 
melodious language that is theirs, hear it spoken, not as it is taught 
in school or in university, but as it is taught at the mother's knee. 
When they come to New Orleans they are coming to a city of their 
own. When they come to New Orleans they are not coming to a city 
that is but a memory of Spanish possession, as San Francisco is; 
but they are coming to a city where, below Canal Street, one-half 
of the city is a Spanish-French city to-day, built by the Spanish and 
the French, and where these two languages predominate and are 
heard on every street corner and in almost every home. 

Then, agaih, when you locate an exposition, Mr. Chairman, you 
want to locate it where our own people can reach it. The great 
mass of the people of these United States live east of the Eocky 
Mountains. Within a radius of a thousand miles of New Orleans 
are 65,000,000 people. There are only some six millions within 
that same radius of San Francisco. Within a radius of 1,500 miles 
of New Orleans there are ninety-odd millions of people, by the 
census of 10 years ago, and only some 17,000,000 people in that 
same radius from San Francisco. The center of population is 500 
miles from New Orleans and 2,500 miles from San Francisco. The 
j)eople of these United States can and will attend an exposition in 
New Orleans. An exposition located in San Francisco will be 
attended by Pacific slope people living within 500 miles of San 
Francisco. Beyond that it becomes an exposition, not for the rich, 
but for the idle rich, because a man to leave the busy, teeming marts 
of the East or the Middle West to go to an exposition in San Fran- 
cisco must have two things: He must have both money and leisure. 
One is not sufficient. There are lots of us, Mr. Chairman, in the 
United States who could not attend because we lack one of those 
two essentials, and it would not be leisure. We can get to New 
Orleans in one-fifth of the time that we can get to San Francisco. 
Coming up on our special train the other day were two of our dis- 
tinguished friends from California who were on their way to Wash- 
ington to work for San Francisco, and their best route to get to 
AVashington was to come to New Orleans and come up with us on 
our special train. [Laughter and applause.] We were glad to have 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 7 

them. They were nice gentlemen, splendid products of a splendid 
State ; but one of the greatest charms of California is that the horns 
of the cattle always grow longer in the next county, or that distance 
lends enchantment to the view. A splendid State after you get there, 
magnificent people, but, oh, the trials and tribulations of getting 
there from the days of forty-nine down to the days of 1911. 

We want to locate the exposition, Mr. Chairman, where the great 
mass of the people can reach it. We want to locate the exposition, if 
it is a Panama exposition, at the metropolis closest to the Panama 
Canal itself. If we were celebrating the acquisition of the Philippine 
Islands by the Government, if we celebrate that, then I say let us 
hold it in San Francisco [laughter], because it is the closest city to 
the Philippines, and it is the closest city to the Orient. If we ever 
celebrate the anniversay of Perry opening Japan, let us celebrate it 
in San Francisco — provided the Japanese would agree to it. But 
when we are called upon to celebrate the opening of the Panama 
Canal, it does look to me, Mr. Chairman, that we ought to get some 
spot somewhere close to the canal itself. 

The Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of Africa, are closer to the 
Panama Canal than is San Francisco. [Laughter.] A man whose 
home is in San Francisco and who works on the Panama Canal to-day 
can leave the canal on one of our splendid steamship lines that ply 
between that Kepublic and New Orleans, take a train from New 
Orleans for San Francisco, and spend almost a week with his family, 
come back to New Orleans, and sail for and reach the canal in a 
shorter space of time than he can go direct from Panama to San 
Francisco by steamer. [Applause.] 

Everyone in San Francisco who goes to the Panama Canal or to 
any of the adjacent countries comes through New Orleans, and every- 
one in that country around the canal who is on his way to San Fran- 
cisco passes through New Orleans. We have as fine a steamship line 
out of New Orleans to the canal as sails anywhere. It is a four-day 
trip ; it is over a 21-day trip by the fastest vessels that they have ply- 
ing in the trade to-day between Panama and San Francisco. They, 
of course, will argue that they make stops. We do not have any 
stops to make. The Panama Canal is south by east of New Orleans, 
1,300 miles away. But even without any stops it is 3,400 miles away 
from San Francisco. 

Mr. Chairman, we in New Orleans and Louisiana are asking your 
favorable consideration of this bill because we believe we are the 
logical point at which this celebration should be had. It is one of 
the greatest seaports in America. This is a maritime affair, we are 
told. Well, if that is true, the harbor at New Orleans can float the 
navies of the world, and the greatest ships that your and my Gov- 
ernment has to-day have not only come as high as New Orleans on 
the Father of Waters, but have gone up nearly 200 miles farther, 
to the city of Natchez, in the State of Mississippi. We have a har- 
bor at New Orleans unexcelled by any harbor in the world. It is 
not an inland city, as has been claimed by our friends, the enemy. 
We make no fight on San Francisco. There are things that might 
be said about her that we have left unsaid; things we might have 
done that we have left undone. We have no fight against San Fran- 
cisco. New Orleans has no fight on any community that has come 
through trials and tribulations, trying to build itself up again. If 



8 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

there is anything that the people that I represent admire more than 
all else it is pluck and bravery, and when we witness the magnificent 
spectacle of San Francisco laid waste by nature's act, then, on the 
wreck and ruin of the city, building up a splendid American com- 
munity, we take our hats off to that kind of pluck ; we admire it in 
any people in the world. New Orleans has no fight to make on any 
city or on any State that has had troubles and trials, for God knows 
we have also had ours. God knows the heavy hand of adversity has 
been placed on our people, acts for which you and I are not respon- 
sible; death, destruction, disaster, flood, war, everything has gone 
to make our lot not one of roses. But our people, confident in the 
justice of their cause and believing in the greatness and goodness of 
Providence, have fought with an ever-renewed vigor, working to- 
ward better things; and, thank God, I can stand in the Nation's 
Capital to-day and tell you, the representatives of 100,000,000 of 
people, that the sun of prosperity is shining on Louisiana and New 
Orleans to-day; we are moving ahead. We have fought the good 
fight, we have kept the faith, and the city and the State that this 
delegation is up here to represent to-day are rich and prosperous, 
happy and contented. 

Ever westward, Mr. Chairman, ever westward has been the history 
of your race and mine. The white race, springing from the table- 
lands of Asia, has ever swept toward the west, until to-day it is met 
by the impassable barrier of the waters of the Pacific, beyond which 
are the yellow races that crowd Asia almost to suffocation. Farther 
west your people and mine can not go. The only things that have 
held our people in that westward march have been the frost line of 
the North and the fever line of the South. Against the frosts of 
the North human ingenuity, human brains could do naught. But, 
owing to American manhood, bravery, and science, the fever line of 
the South has been wiped away, and the next great movement of the 
white race, Mr. Chairman, is going to be to the South, to that section 
of your country and mine that offers more splendid inducements than 
any section of the world to-day. By your act and the act of this 
Congress you may put the day forward for the day, or you may retard 
it, but you can not prevent, for it is bound to come. As certain as the 
star of empire westward took its way in the years that used to be, 
to-day the finger of destiny, of progress, of development, points ir- 
resistibly to the Southland. In the development of the South comes 
increased prosperity and plenty to every section of the Union. 

When you locate this exposition at New Orleans, bring the brain 
and the money and brawn of the world down through that country 
and let them see what it has to offer, help us build up our waste 
places, make two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, 
every commercial heartbeat of this Nation will quicken. For our 
prosperity will be yours, our plenty you will share in ; the undevel- 
oped resources of the South are to-day the Nation's greatest asset. 
The great Mississippi Valley asks that this exposition be placed in 
New Orleans — that valley which rivals, if it does not excel, in rich- 
ness the Nile, that valley where we raise enough cotton to clothe the 
naked, enough com and wheat to feed the hungry, enough coal to 
make warm those of all the world. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 9 

Mr. Chairman, there are others to be heard. I thank you for 
your courtesy. I have been told that some gentlemen want to ask 
me some questions: and if they do. I will take pleasure in answering 
them. 

The Chairman. Do any of the members of the committee desire 
to ask the Governor any questions? 

Gov. Sanders. I have been told that some of the California gentle- 
men have some questions that they would like to ask; and if so, I 
will be only too glad to answer them if I can. 

Mr, Kahn. We have no questions, Mr. Chairman. 

Gov. Sanders. Then I may say I want to thank you all for your 
courtesy, and say to you that I appreciate this opportunity of being 
heard in presenting our claims, and make the further statement that 
there are other gentlemen from New Orleans and Louisiana who will 
address you at the proper time. [Great applause.] 

STATEMENT OF CRAWFORD H. ELLIS, OF NEW ORLEANS, LA. 

The Chairman. Gen. Estopinal. who will address the committee 
next? 

Mr. Estopinal. INIr. Chairman, the next speaker is Mr. C. H. Ellis, 
whom I have the honor to introduce to the committee. 

Mr, Ellis. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I have 
been requested by our exposition company to make you a short ad- 
dress this morning on the question of transportation. They have 
only allowed me 10 minutes, and it is very difficult to go over such a 
comprehensive subject in so short a time. But I shall endeavor to 
state to you in a brief way as much as I can. 

One of the most essential things to the success of an exposition is 
the question of quick, rapid, and economic transportation. That 
New Orleans has. Assuming that in the year 1915 the various rail- 
road and steamship interests will put on special rates to the exposi- 
tion, and, assuming that the railroads will put on a rate of 1 cent per 
mile, let us take the center of population, which is Lincoln County, 
Ind. Cincinnati is the largest city nearest that point. Cincinnati is 
829 miles from New Orleans. Eight hundred and twenty-nine miles 
would mean a railroad fare of $8.29. With $100 in his pocket any- 
one can visit the fair and remain there a week if he chooses, the 
balance being sufficient to pay his expenses. If he does not choose to 
stay in New Orleans a sufficient length of time to get rid of that $100, 
he can very easily take a steamer and run down to Panama and see 
the thing that is being celebrated, because at that time it is the inten- 
tion of the company I represent to have 18-knot vessels which will 
make the trip from New Orleans to Panama in three days. You can 
leave New Orleans on Saturday evening and take lunch in Panama 
on Tuesday. You can now leave there on Saturday at noon and eat 
your breakfast in Panama on Thursday morning. We can take a 
man from San Francisco on Wednesday morning, bring him to New 
Orleans, give him a Creole breakfast, and put him into Panama the 
next Thursday morning. We can likewise transport them with equal 
facility the other way; whereas, as our governor has stated, it takes 
from 21 to 25 days by direct steamer from San Francisco to the 
Isthmus of Panama. 



10 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

In connection with transportation, I desire to say that the vari- 
ous transcontinental railroads, which are to-day aiding San Fran- 
cisco in this matter, are the people who protested against the con- 
struction of the Panama Canal. They fought it bitterly, and for 
that reason it was delayed, and was only begun a few years ago, and 
will be realized in 1915, which we are sure of under the able manage- 
ment of Col. Goethals. These railroads now have come forward to 
assist a city in the far West to celebrate an undertaking which they 
vigorously opposed. 

In line with Governor Sanders's arguments that New Orleans was 
the first to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, I desire to 
say that not only was it the first to propose the celebration of the 
opening of the canal, but it was in the City of New Orleans, in the 
Board of Trade, while Governor Foster, who is now one of our Sena- 
tors, was governor of the State of Louisiana, that an interoceanic 
canal was first thought of. 

Taking the transportation facilities as a whole, for the majority 
of the population of the United States, I would say that 80 per cent 
can come to see the fair in New Orleans for 80 per cent less 
than what it will cost them to go to Frisco, not to speak of the 
Central and South American countries, who are right at our doors; 
and by means of our frequent steamship communication from New 
Orleans, which amounts to from eight to ten vessels a week, they 
can sail from there daily, and by the year 1915 we will probably have 
as many sailings as from 12 to 15 a week. 

I do "not wish to go into the question of describing our ships, as 
fortunately we have two members of your committee whom we had 
the pleasure of having had on a trip to Panama on our vessels not 
very long since, and they assured me they were very well pleased with 
the accommodations. Those are only a sample of what we will have 
in 1915, when the Panama Canal shall have opened, and when we 
shall have to prepare for that great commerce which is to come to the 
city of New Orleans and the Mississippi Valley. The trade rela- 
tions between New Orleans and Central and South America are such 
that it has kept our company very busy during the past 10 years 
providing the necessary service to take care of the rapid develop- 
ment of that trade. 

The Chairman. Wliat is the present steamship rate from New 
Orleans to Panama? 

Mr. Ellis. The present round-trip rate from New ^ Orleans to 
Panama is $75. During the year 1915 we propose, and it is our inten- 
tion, to make the trip in so much shorter length of time as to make 
the fare about $40 ; not over that, in any event. So that anyone can 
really travel from New Orleans to the Panama Canal and see, not 
only the exposition at New Orleans, but the canal itself for, say, a 
$100 bill, including all expenses. 

In regard to the trade relations between the Southern States — 
particularly the port of New Orleans — and Central and South 
America, statistics for the past 10 years show an increase of over 
120 per cent. The indications are that for the next 10 years, espe- 
cially after the Panama Canal shall have been opened, it will more 
than again equal that amount. There is no question but that Colon 
and Panama will be transfer stations for transcontinental shipments 
from Europe to points on the southern coast of the United States, 



. PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 11 

as well as the west coasts of Central and South America. All that 
will mean that New Orleans will get her goods through that canal 
from the Central and South American countries, and likewise dis- 
tribute, not only her products, but those of the entire Mississippi 
Valley. 

Mr. Chairman, in conclusion I desire to reiterate what our worthy 
governor has said, we have no desire to rob one star from the diadem 
of San Francisco's crown nor steal one rose from the wreath of her 
glory. The star of empire is no longer westward, but it is now 
shining on the sunny Southland, the seashores of the American Med- 
iterranean. We therefore urge and hope that you will make a 
favorable report on our bill and locate the exposition at the city of 
New Orleans, where everybody can see it, whether he is rich or poor. 
I thank you. [Applause.] 

STATEMENT OF T. P. THOMPSON, OF NEW ORLEANS, LA. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to introduce to 
the committee at this time Mr. T. P. Thompson the originator of the 
idea of the celebration of the opening of the Panama Canal at New 
Orleans. 

Mr. Thompson. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, for the purpose of 
economizing your time, knowing this session must be brief, I have 
put in 20 epigrammatic numbers the salient reasons why the Panama 
exposition should be held at New Orleans, and with your permission 
I will briefly state them. 

1. New drleans is the nearest United States city to the Panama 
Canal (1,380 miles). 

2. New Orleans is the nearest United States city to the center of 
the United States population (500 miles). 

3. New Orleans is the hub of the Western Hemisphere — more peo- 
ple of its nearly 200,000,000 inhabitants can conveniently come to this 
logical point than to any other city. 

4. New Orleans is the only candidate that can hold a world's ex- 
position. The following proves that San Francisco can not assemble 
exhibits from Europe, nor from the Atlantic coasts of North and 
South America : 

5. London is 4,500 miles from New Orleans, and 14,500 miles from 
San Francisco by ship. 

6. New Orleans has regular steamship lines to Europe — 17 days 
away. San Francisco has none. 

7. New Orleans has regular steamship lines from Brazil and Ar- 
gentina, and from the Central Americas. San Francisco has only 
an infrequent service confined to a few west coast points. 

8. Three times as much business is done by the Gulf ports as is 
done by the Pacific ports with foreign nations — $465,000,000 against 
$156,000,000. 

9. A Pacific Panama exposition would be what its name indicates, 
a fair for the benefit of seven Pacific States. San Francisco is 2,500 
miles west of the center of the United States population. 

10. Less than 5 per cent of the United States population live west 
of the Eocky Mountains, 55 per cent of the United States popula- 
tion live in the Mississippi Valley, the other 40 per cent are on the 
Atlantic seaboard — within one and one-half days' travel of the logical 



12 PROPOSED PAISTAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

point, and can, with South and Central Americans and Europeans, 
easily visit New Orleans. 

11. Strategically, New Orleans is the logical Pan-American dis- 
tributing point for manufactures, as well as products. It is the key 
port of the greatest scheme of waterways in the world. 

12. Instead of a newly built and conventional city. New Orleans 
has "cheek by jowl " the skyscraper and the Spanish cabildo — the 
modern hotel and the ancient restaurant operated by a third genera- 
tion of Creole chefs; the newest theaters and the old French opera 
house of ante bellum days. We have buildings erected 50 jeavs be- 
fore the missions of California (1727), also the latest thing in apart- 
ment houses. 

13. The atmosphere of this romantic city is that of southern 
France, the Mardi Gras carnival is the finished product of a century 
of effort, and attracts 50,000 people annually. Latin ancestry and 
European travel have given a court finish to the hospitality extended 
by the Creole citizen, who will delight to welcome Pan-America 
and the world to this logical point in 1915. 

14. New Orleans lies en route to Panama, which is but 1,300 miles 
distant. It is the "half-way house" for both New Yorkers and San 
Franciscans. 

15. San Francisco is the farthest metropolis in the United States 
from Panama ; New Orleans is the nearest. 

16. San Francisco did not propose or plan a Panama celebration 
until 1909, six months after San Diego had well started the idea. 
A Pacific Ocean discovery celebration was broached in 1904, but was 
pigeon-holed a year later. New Orleans began with an organized 
business body to exploit a Panama exposition on May 5, 1907, within 
30 days after official announcement from Washington fixed January 
1, 1915, as the date for the completion and opening of the canal. 

17. We at once evade any discussion of where the exposition may 
be held, solving the contention of Atlantic and Pacific rights by 
locating this great celebration at a point on the Gulf, the adjacent 
body of water, to have the exposition at the canal's nearest United 
States metropolis, where those who desire may also see the canal — 
four days away. 

18. We offer New Orleans as an attractive and hospitable city, 
quaintly and uniquely so; famous for its carnivals, French opera, 
hotels, and restaurants. Hotel projects now forming will enable, 
with the usual pre-exposition preparations made in every world's 
fair, accommodations for 100,000 excess in 1915. 

19. Articles of great bulk, also delicate machinery, statuary, paint- 
ings, and other European exhibits, may only be treated to one hand- 
ling. The breaking of freight for transshipment across the continent 
will make an exhibit of European objects of art, science, etc., impos- 
sible. Hence, New Orleans, which has the convenience of being but 
17 days away by regular steamship lines, one wharf to another, will 
be the logical place for a real exposition of European and South 
American productions. 

20. Potentiality: The resources of Louisiana as a State are very 
great — it is first in sugar, first in salt, first in sulphur, and first in 
rice; second in lumber; and ranks high in cotton, corn, and garden 
truck. The perique tobacco is only grown here in Louisiana, also 
the tobasco pepper. We have the greatest inland waterway system of 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 13 

canals and bayous in America, and alluvium lies 100 feet deep in this 
delta. This offer is the best bid to the industrious poor man of any 
State in the United States. 

Wealth: The real wealth of Louisiana lies in her potentiality as 
an income producer; we have no exhausted gold mines, but we have 
mines of alluvial lands ready to come into use, which for 1,000 years 
will need no cultivator beyond the plow. These lands will produce 
from $100 to $1,000 per acre. Is this not better than gold? Louisi- 
ana has all the value to America that Holland has to Europe. 
Though poorer in gold, we are richer in that which produces wealth. 
Louisiana is but one-third the size of California and has 20,000,000 
acres lying fallow. We need immigration. We produce now more 
wealth per cultivated acre than does any State in the Union. 

21. The climate of Louisiana is the most balmy and healthful 
to be found in America. The months of June, July, and August are 
not warmer in New Orleans than in Cincinnati, St. Louis, or New 
York; the extremes of heat are greater in these cities, according to 
Bulletin Q, Weather Department, for 1910. There are 50,000,000 
people on the Western Hemisphere nearer the equator than is New 
Orleans. The greatest populations of the earth are along the thirtieth 
degree north parallel of latitude — our degree. We have 4,000 square 
miles of water within our borders tempering the heat. Eighty-eight 
degrees is a high summer thermometer in Louisiana, and a record 
of less than freezing is rare in winter. And the average summer tem- 
perature here is below that of California. We have not had a snow 
for ten winters. 

22. We have universities, grand opera, and all the evidences of a 
cosmopolitan culture, which two centuries of custom have produced. 
We are not, however, in the habit of parading our civilization, and 
only indicate these things as a part of the setting we offer for a great 
fair. 

23. We will have enough money for an exposition — as much as 
had St. Louis and Chicago for that purpose — $10,000,000. 

The cost of construction in San Francisco is nearly 60 per cent 
more than is the same cost in New Orleans, hence San Francisco 
must have $17,000,000 to erect what will cost us $10,000,000. 

24. The monotony of a brand-new business section is not very 
attractive to people who reside in growing America. New Orleans 
has, besides the new skyscraper section, the Vieux Carre of 1718. 
Three centuries of progress, with its atmosphere and setting, can be 
studied in our unique and historic cosmopolis. 

25. There are two kinds of views — landscape and marine. Most 
people from the interior want to see the water front and the great 
ships and desire to eat sea food. 

Instead of the Kocky Mountain overland trip we offer to the visitor 
a short trip to Panama in ships equal to the best trans-Atlantic 
boats and at a cost to him of less money than the transmountain 
journey. We offer a visit to the Panama Canal — four days away — 
at about the same expense of staying in a hotel. 

New Orleans need not refer to itself in the matter of being an inter- 
esting cosmopolis. Everybody in the United States knows that it 
has history, people, and architecture, all peculiarly charming. 

26. The great port of New Orleans is the southern gateway to the 
United States, just as San Francisco is the western. Panama is 
almost directly south by east of New Orleans, but 1,300 miles away. 



14 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Our fresh-water harbor is the most extensive in the world. It is 
now in use for more than 20 miles, and, like the modern bookcase, 
you can extend it indefinitely. The greatest of Uncle Sam's war- 
ships tie up at our docks. It does not take a ship longer after crossing 
the bar to reach its wharf than it does at New York, Liverpool, or 
Manchester. The Government dry dock at New Orleans is the 
Jargest in the world. 

New Orleans does not arrogate to herself the possibility of person- 
ating and financing the entire Kepublic at this fair. We will merely 
be hostess at this logical gathering point, visitors, exhibitors, and 
those who would see^the canal would have to be entertained. We 
offer our facilities for the purpose, and will supply $10,000,000 with 
which to make proper setting for the celebration. Uncle^ Sam will 
hardly refuse to exhibit where he invites nations to exhibit. 

We are glad to be able here to refute the imputation that we owe 
money on a previous exposition. 

In 1882 the Cotton Planters' Association met in convention at 
Memphis, where it was proposed to celebrate the centennial of the 
first exportation of cotton in 1884. The proposition was to hold in 
New Orleans or some other city an exposition. One hundred thou- 
sand dollars was asked for and contributed by New Orleans and 
$100,000 by our State, and some $500,000 subscribed by the people 
of the South. Arrangements were entered into by the management 
with the United States Government to lend to this enterprise, to 
erect buildings, and to exhibit ; its money to be expended by its own 
commissioners, an agreement being consummated at the time to repay 
the United States from the gate receipts after the current expenses 
were liquidated. There was no excess money above expense, and 
Uncle Sam was not repaid, neither was Louisiana nor New Orleans. 
To-day on the books of the United States Treasury, the story is 
plainly told, and no debit charge is carried; there are debit charges 
against other expositions on these books, but none against the Cotton 
Centennial. The Cotton Centennial was a small affair, the first expo- 
sition in the South after the Civil War. It probably cost less than 
any of the three recent Pacific coast expositions. The Government 
went into it to help in the uplift of a devastated section; war and 
reconstruction had impoverished and depopulated a whole j)eople, 
and this was friendly evidence of a national desire to aid in the 
rehabilitation of a struggling section of our common country. 

STATEMENT OF MOST REV. JAMES H. BLENK, ARCHBISHOP OF 

NEW ORLEANS. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. I understand we have a half hour yet, and if the 
committee will indulge me I will present another gentleman. I have 
the honor to introduce now His Grace Archbishop Blenk, of New 
Orleans. [Applause.] 

Archbishop Blenk. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the com- 
mittee, if you will allow me, I vrill present my credentials on this 
occasion. I trust you will not think that I am overstraining the 
bounds of modesty or propriety. 

For seven years I had the honor of being in the closest relations 
with the people of Porto Rico. I was their first American bishop, 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 15 

and as such I have been able, together with the officials of our Gov- 
ernment down in Porto Rico, and together with the good will of 
our home Government, to render, in the language of President 
Roosevelt, Mr. Taft, the different governors that were down there 
in my time, and Mr. Winthrop, who. is now Assistant Secretary ot 
the Navy, the greatest services, not only to those people in Porto 
Rico, but also to our own Government, its aims and objects, which 
they, with American energy and determination, were pursuing in 
order to bring the Island of Porto Rico, with its people, under the 
willing sway and authority, power, and prosperity of the United 
States. 

During my stay there it has been my singular opportunity to 
meet a great many representative people from South America, and 
the impression, deep and indelible, that has been left upon me is that 
they long, somehow, at some time, to come into closer business, so- 
cial, and political relations with the United States of America. 
They at the bottom of their hearts believe their future prosperity, 
their welfare, their political life, will depend on the closeness of their 
relations with the United States of America. 

Mr. Chairman, a great deal, no doubt, has been done by our Gov- 
ernment to establish these relations; but, to my thinking, the com- 
pletion of the opening of the Panama Canal brings with it the his- 
toric opportunities for cementing all the republics of our hemisphere 
together by the closest and most advantageous and beneficial rela- 
tions that possibly could exist. 

Since our political life we have established firmly — please God, 
perpetually — the noblest, the best, the most prosperous, the most 
justice-loving republic in the world, and those people are looking to- 
ward the United States to take from her what is best in their own 
interests, and to do all in their power to win our lasting good will 
and friendship and to give it to us also for these great benefits that 
can be conferred upon it. 

I listened with a little dismay, Mr. Chairman, to the statement of 
fabulous wealth as brought out by the gentleman from California. 
But whilst he was speaking the thought came up in my mind that 
great ends are to be encompassed, and among them is to throw open 
the portals, so to speak, of the Gulf ports, so that the people of South 
America can come not only at the greatest inconvenience and with 
innumerable difficulties out to San Francisco, but throughout the 
United States, through that great avenue which New Orleans rep- 
resents for the holding of this exposition, in especial regard to these 
people, these 21 South American republics. They want to avail 
themselves of all that we have best in our land, of our educa- 
tional facilities ; they want to come into closer social contact with us ; 
they want to know the United States better and they want to be bet- 
ter known, and eventually they are going to take the way that is 
shortest, that is best, that seems to have l^en — I believe has been — 
brought around by Providential designs. 

If I have, Mr. Chairman, had any success in Porto Rico it was 
ascribed by our President, by the governors, and by the different 
heads of the departments to the fact that I was from New Orleans; 
that I understood the characteristics, the aspirations, the aims of 
those people. They need to be dealt with according to their own 
moral, artistic, traditional make-up. If they will say, " Este senor, 



16 PEOPOSED PAI^AMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

es mil}', simpatico '' — that is. he is a genial fellow, one you can ap- 
proach, one who speaks our language — -you have won them over, and 
I believe that in a small way the work that it was my privilege and 
n\y honor to accomplish in Porto Kico for the Porto Ricans, I be- 
lieve in a great way, in a way that will be entirely a grand, new era, 
it will make the dream of Mr. Monroe a splendid and glorious reality, 
"America for the Americans." I think that it will cease to be said 
that South America is for Europe. I think that New Orleans has 
all the qualifications for this — her hospitality, her genial manners, 
her approachableness, her kindliness, the fact that somehow or other 
that Latin spirit still prevails largely in New Orleans and in Loui- 
siana — I believe that that verj^ fact will be the inducement for the 
people of South America to establish those relations which are so 
much desired for our own future, as well as for their future. Well 
I remember Mr. Eoot, in a public address, saying that if we want 
to retain and act up to the principle of President Monroe, "America 
for Americans," then we must be ready to fight for it. I think the 
exposition, if held in New Orleans, will keep America entirely for 
Americans and that the principle of Mr. Monroe that has so long 
languished will shine brightly and benignly over the entire hemi- 
sphere. [Applause.] 

I am sorry to say anything that may seem adverse to California. 
That could not be done out in California. I believe that if ever the 
time comes when we want to give the Orientals an opportunity of 
coming to the United States of America, of entrenching themselves. 
of taking strategical positions against the time when their own coun- 
try will rise up against America. I think that the most useful, the 
most conducive act to bring about that is to hold an exposition in 
San Francisco. We want South America; we do not want the Orien- 
tals; and therefore I submit, Mr. Chairman, that, regardless of the 
sum of money offered by California, we should get that exposition in 
New Orleans, because by giving it to New Orleans the South will at 
length get an opportunity to come into her own, to make known her 
magnificent resources, to impress upon the people that will visit us 
the truth of the climatic conditions, that are simply ideal — and so 
the people all over the United States will tell you, provided they are 
not from San Francisco. [Laughter.] 

I submit, then, to you, Mr. Chairman, and the honorable commit- 
tee, that without any hesitation you give New Orleans this great 
opportunity for her own development, for the inheritance that is due 
to the South, for the entire United States, the glory, the prosperity 
of the entire United States, for the 20 South American Repub- 
lics, who themselves are clamoring, not for San Francisco, but for 
New Orleans, as the point where the exposition should be held. I 
submit that you give us the exposition. [Great applatise.] 

STATEMENT OF PROF. ALCEE FORTIER, OF TULANE UNIVERSITY. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. I have the honor and pleasure of introducing now 
my friend. Prof. Fortier, of Tulane University. 

'Mr. Fortier. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I have been asked 
to appear before you to say something about the historical point in 
this question. If I were to speak of the history of Louisiana as it 
deserves to be mentioned, 10 minutes, of course, would not be suifi- 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 17 

cient. We need a great many hours in order to be able to tell you 
what we have done in the history of our State. I think that, as I 
have such a little time, I will call your attention to some things that 
have been done there in Louisiana that perhaps the other people of 
the United States do not know suiRciently. 

The colony of Louisiana was established by the French. We claim 
that we gave to the United States a great lesson when, in the year 
1768, the people of New Orleans and of Louisiana rose against the 
Spanish and thought of establishing a republic on the banks of the 
Mississippi River. I think that this is one of the great contributions 
to the history of the United States that in New Orleans, eight years 
before the Declaration of Independence, we thought of establishing 
a republic. Mr. Chairman, of course this was not possible at that 
time, but we are proud that we are the descendents of those men who 
first had the idea of independence on this continent. 

Now the second point. The Government of Spain, which was 
established in New Orleans in a very ruthless way, became very mild 
and paternal and glorious; and this, Mr. Chairman, is a point that 
very few people in this country know that the people of Louisiana 
took part in the war of the American Revolution. I had the honor 
in 1901 of addressing President McKinley, and I stated that fact to 
him; and, Mr. Chairman, the President of the United States did 
not know that. We want all of you to come to New Orleans and to 
study the history of the United States. [Laughter.] You can learn 
it there better than anywhere else [laughter], because some of the 
greatest events in our history took place there in New Orleans on 
the banks of the Mississippi River. When in 1779 Bernardo Galvez 
made war against Baton Rouge; when in 1780 he captured Mobile; 
Avhen in 1781 he captured Pensacola, there,* Mr. Chairman, our 
ancestors took part in the war of the American Revolution, and I 
may be permitted to say that it is a great glory for me to say that I 
am one of the sons of the American Revolution, although my family 
has been in Louisiana the last 200 years, and has never left there. 

It is a great fact to think of, that we in New Orleans, although 
Louisiana at that time was a Spanish colony, helped Washington, 
and we have letters from Washington to Galvez acknowledging the 
great help given by the Louisianans to the cause of the American 
Revolution. So, during the French dominion, we gave that great 
lesson of independence; during the Spanish dominion the part we 
took in the War of the American Revolution is remarkable, and 
since we have been American for more than 100 years we have 
been loyal citizens of the United States, and on the battle field 
of Chalmette what did we do but prevent the British from invad- 
ing our country, and the greatest victory, perhaps, in the world 
took place there, in New Orleans. 

Mr. Chairman, we are going to celebrate next year the centennial 
of Louisiana's admission as a State into the Union. We have those 
three strata pf civilization, the French, the Spanish, and the Ameri- 
can, The French and the Spanish are glorious traditions, but we 
are above all Americans, and we are proud of our country, of our 
history, and I wish to repeat, we want you all to come to Louisiana 
to study the history of the United States, which, I am sorry to say. 

73172—11 2 



18 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

many of you do not know yet, but which we are willing to teach you. 
[Laughter.] I have no more time left, Mr. Chairman. If I were 
to speak of all that we have done for the civilization of the United 
States, and for the history of our country, I would have to stand 
before you for hours. I know that you would be glad to hear me 
talking of Louisiana for many hours, but there may be some other 
questions as to the country that may be of as much interest, perhaps, 
as those concerning Louisiana, and I shall therefore thank you for 
your kindness. [Great applause.] 

The Chairman. This will conclude the hearing for this morning. 
It will be resumed promptly at 10 o'clock to-morrow morning on 
this room. 

Thereupon, at 12.05 o'clock p. m., the committee adjourned until 
to-morrow, Wednesday, January 11, 1911, at 10 o'clock. 



Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions, 

House of Representatives, 

Wednesday, January 11, 1911. 
The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., Hon. William A. Rodenberg 
(chairman) presiding. 
The Chairman. We will now resume our hearing, Mr. Estopinal. 
Mr. Estopinal. Mr. Chairman, the first speaker this morning will 
be Mr. W. B. Thompson, president of the Cotton Exchange of New 
Orleans. "" 

STATEMENT OF MR. W. B. THOMPSON, PRESIDENT OF THE 
COTTON EXCHANGE OF NEW ORLEANS, LA. 

Mr. Thompson. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I assume that the 
people of the United States are not only willing but are in duty 
bound to celebrate with solemnity and honor the greatest achievement 
of American genius and the largest show of American power. The 
construction of the Panama Canal epitomizes the highest develop- 
ment of engineering skill and represents the most conspicuous mani- 
festation of constructive force. The annals of mankind record 
wonders accomplished in the years gone by and history yet to be 
written will bear witness to still greater marvels in the future progress 
of the world, but with due respect for what has gone before and with 
reverent hope for what is yet to come, it may be confidently affirmed 
that this great isthmian venture constitutes the most heroic economic 
effort of the race to date and is in itself, in comprehensive material 
significance, the latest and greatest wonder of the world. 

value of expositions. 

Celebration is a national instinct and a national obligation. I^eav- 
ing out of consideration for the moment the commercial phase of 
expositions and public shows, it seems to me that these celebrations 
have a profound patriotic significance. It is not alone upon com- 
mercialism that a nation thrives, nor is its progress truly measured 
by the trial balance of its money supph". A nation's most potential 
assets are its ideals. The individual mind or the national mind 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 19 

which has no patriotic imagination will become crass and sordid, and 
these benumbing errors are, and as history will declare, have ever been, 
the antitheses of achievement and the sure forerunners of retrogres- 
sion and decay. A reasonable national pride constitutes the most 
potent source of present strength and the surest promise of future 
advancement. I do not mean the arrogance of mere temporary 
material power, but tlie militant self-respect which proceeds from 
the consciousness of a creditable past and is sustained by the assur- 
ance of ability to cope with whatever the future may hold in store. 
It is, therefore, well to focus the attention of the people upon the 
large and salient facts in their country's history and to stimulate their 
enthusiasm by tlie displa}^ of greatness already achieved and their am- 
bition by the prospect of unlimited opportunity beyond. These con- 
ceptions are inspired and kept alive in the great mass of people by 
visible representations. Conspicuous demonstration makes the 
widest and most direct appeal. Gieat expositions liave a psycho- 
logical as well as a commercial and an educational vahie. A great 
idea is visualized by spectacular illustration and through the medium 
of these commemorating occasions forcible appeal is made to that 
sense of the people which respondb in emulation and patriotic endeavor. 
The ethical value of commemorating shows is not usually accorded the 
consideration which I think it should receive. But there is another 
advantage issuing from these functions which is more obvious and 
none the less valuable and real. We announce that we are celebrating 
this or that event, but the basis of our undertaldng is a much more 
substantial consideration Our main object is to make the occasion 
contribute to the material profit of the people for whose benefit it is 
organized. The tremendous force of advertisement is obvious. A 
man or a people holds only a profitless ownership in an asset or an 
advantage, of which he or they are alone aware. The things of value 
we have and the things of value we do become remunerative only to 
the extent to which they are exploited The material resources of 
the United States are more varied and more prolific than those of 
any other nation; and in productivity of genius no other people 
surpasses ours. The greater the number of people who know what we 
have and what we can do, the larger will be the demand upon our 
sources of supply. The greatest need of a developing country is 
exploitation. Ours is a country of developing and of yet undeveloped 
resources. The greatest need of a producing country is a broad and 
ever broadening market for its products. Ours is a producing country 
and is profited most directly and to the greatest extefit by those 
movements which bring traders into touch with its resources and into 
its markets for supplies. Moreover, the Nation owes its largest debt 
to its producers, or to the men who create its wealth, and it is through 
the exploitation and utilization of these resources of material and of 
mind that the individual worker comes into his own. Money, or 
wealth already created, has been given in these United States, ample 
opportunity to entrench itself and enlarge its power. What we most 
need now ife encouragement for the man who produces wealth by the 
work of his hands and creates value by the application of his genius. 
We have here the material and the men, and can serve the large 
popular cause in no more efl^ective way than by bringing to the world 
a realization of these essential facts, and thereby affording our work- 
ing citizens a wider market for the output of their productive energy. 



20 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

The most efficacious method of bringing about the desired results in 
this regard, is to gather together at some convenient place, the people 
from all parts of the earth and to exhibit to these our goods, wares, 
and potential possibilities; and it is a perfectly obvious conclusion 
that the greater the concourse so assembled and the more representa- 
tive the attendance and participation so secured, the greater the good 
that will flow from the undertaking. 

DYNAMIC PEOPHECY. 

Hitherto, as I recall, the great expositions held in this country 
have been dedicated to some important event in our previous his- 
tory. The design has been, through the medium of a post mortem 
celebration, to draw some attention to the event itself, but princi- 
pally and primarily to attract a multitude of people in the interest 
of exploitation and for the financial profit of the community in 
which the celebration was held. Such celebrations, although bene- 
ficial in the large and ultimate sense, are not without certain obvious 
drawbacks. It is observed that after the close of these expositions 
the abrupt return to the comparatively normal condition is attended 
by certain reactionary disadvantages. The proposed World's 
Panama Exposition is widely different from the celebrations referred 
to, both in the theory of organization and in the facts upon which 
the undertaking is based. The proposed exposition deals not with 
the past but with the future. It is not retrospective, but prophetic. 
It will not only commemorate a great modern achievement, but will 
celebrate the discovery of a new commercial world. The termina- 
tion of the exposition will not be the signal for the resumption of 
the normal, but will mark a tremendous impulse of trade expansion, 
which impulse and which expansion the exposition itself will have 
been the efficient means of promoting. The dream of the ages 
has been to break down the isthmian barrier and unite the waters 
of the two oceans. The supreme importance of the canal has appealed 
to the commercial sense of all the nations. That narrow strip of 
water will alter the trade map not only of the Western Hemisphere 
but of the world. Other nations have made stupendous efforts to 
accomplish the task, and have failed. It has remamed for the genius 
and determination of the people of the United States to accomplish 
the seemingly impossible ancl by such accomplishment to place all- 
the nations permanently in debt to us. To fittingly celebrate this 
great event, and to invite all interested peoples to participate therein, 
and thereby to bring honor to our country and profit to our peo- 
ple, is, as I conceive it, a patriotic duty and an obligation of states- 
manship from which our Congress would not escape if it could and 
from which it could not escape if it would. 

It being assumed, for the reasons stated, that Congress will indorse 
the exposition project, it remains to be discussed the ways and means 
whereby the enteiprise may be consummated and to determine the 
location which will most consistently, efficiently, and successfully sub- 
serve the objects and purposes of the undertaldng. 

WAYS AND MEANS. 

Two States have offered to provide the money necessary for 
financing the proposed Panama exposition, namely, California and 
Louisiana. The State of California in its large and opulent way has 



PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 21 

obligated itself to produce the sum of seventeen and one-half million 
dollars for the purpose of holding the exposition in the great city of 
San Francisco. The State of Louisiana has obhgated itself to supply 
the sum of $10,000,000 for the purpose named, provided that the 
honor of hostess-sliip is bestowed upon the city of New Orleans. Cali- 
fornia has voted a tax which will yield the sum of $10,000,000. The 
balance of its contribution will be made up by private subscription. 
Louisiana has voted a tax which will yield six and one-half milhon dol- 
lars, the balance being represented by private subscription, of which 
more than one and one-half million has been actually signed for and 
additional subscriptions are coming in every day. 

The tax return is as sure in the one wState as in the other, and in both 
the proposed yield is certam. I do not know to what form the Cali- 
fornia subscriptions have been reduced, nor am I prepared to question 
the bona fides or the enforceability of these obligations to pay, but 
I am prepared to say that the Louisiana subscriptions are in the shape 
of signed notes, which when New Orleans is designated by Congress 
as the site of the exposition, will constitute valid, enforceable, and 
bankable obligations. All of which is shown in detail by certificates 
of authorized accountants which we offer in evidence. 

But, waving for the moment the question of the relative collectible 
value of the two subscriptions, and assuming for the sake of argument 
that the pledges of California will produce seventeen and one-half 
million dollars and the pledges of Louisiana at least eight and assur- 
edly ten million dollars, I ventm'e the assertion that the California 
obligation will actually yield little, if any, more than the Louisiana 
obligation, if, indeed, as much. The basis of this assertion is the 
fact that the general range of prices is materially higher in San Fran- 
cisco than in New Orleans, and this fact in its application to the neces- 
saries of living forces the laborers of San Francisco, in order that they 
may earn even a livelihood, to demand wages materially in excess of 
the scale established in New Orleans for similar work and yielding 
the laborers of that city an equal or even a larger share of the comforts 
of life. Hence it will require a greater amount of money to produce 
in San Francisco the same results that would be by a smaller amount 
accomplished in New Orleans. 

Thus considered, it appears that in spite of California's boastful asser- 
tion of the magnitude of its offering it in reality and in fact will give 
no more, if as much, than the more modest obligation of Louisiana will 
yield. From the beginning of this controversy up to the present 
time the principal and only even apparently meritorious argument that 
California has advanced in support of its claims is the money argu- 
ment, expressed in boasts of affluence and reenforced by prodigal and 
ostentatious display of the capacity of its people as spenders. It now 
falls out that even this assumption of superiority is specious and that 
even if the amount of money pledged was the only consideration, or 
even the essential consideration, California's claim of preeminence in 
this regard must be disallowed. 

But although money and a large amount thereof is necessary for 
the purpose, yet money alone will not suffice. AccompHshment of 
the end in view must come as the result of the combination of feasi- 
bility and money. Money can buy many things, but not all. It 
can buy grounds and construct buildings, but it can not arrest the 
flight of time nor annihilate the fact of space. CaUfornia with its 



22 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

money might buy for itself a great California fair, or a greater Pacific 
coast fair, but there is not gold enough in all its mines to purchase 
for it a world's fair in the true and full significance of the term, nor 
to consummate such a celebration as is contemplated by the proposed 
movement, nor such as would be consistent with the comprehensive 
demands of this preeminent occasion. Responsibihty for tliis 
limitation does not rest with the State of California or its people, but 
with Him who arranged the continents, built the mountains, spread 
out the seas, and adjusted the physical conformation of the earth. 

SITE. 

Be it remembered, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, 
that we are proposing to celebrate an event which affects not only 
the Gulf coast and not only the Atlantic coast and not only the 
Pacific coast and not only the Mississippi Valley, but the entire 
United States and the North American Continent; an event which 
affects not only the North American Continent, but the South and 
Central American countries as well, and not only the American 
Continents, but every other country of the commercial world. In 
reacliing a conclusion in this matter you are urged to consider the 
claims of the people of the United States first and the appeals of 
rival cities for recognition afterwards. It is the genius of the Nation 
that is constructing the canal and the money of the Nation wliich is 
making such construction possible, and not the money or the genius 
of San Francisco or New Orleans. You are urged to lose sight of the 
name of New Orleans and the name of San Francisco. Imagine 
that the canal has already been completed, and let your attention 
dwell upon the possibilities of new and profitable relation between 
the trading people of the United States among themselves, and 
between the traders of the United States and those of South and 
Central America, of Europe, and of Asia. Consider how this new 
relation can be cultivated and developed to the greatest profit to the 
people of the United States. Determine how the greatest possible 
number of the trading people of all the countries may be brought 
into touch with the merchants of all the United States and the 
place at which they could be to the best advantage assembled, and 
when you have decided these preeminent considerations, award 
your preference to that city which most nearly conforms to your 
requirements in the prennses and to the demands of the cause. 

The people of New Orleans have no wish to belittle the people of 
San Francisco nor to question their ability to consummate what, in 
respect to grounds, buildings, and appointments, would be a great 
exposition. Nor is it our wish to injure these people or prevent them 
from securing any benefit to which they are entitled. On the con- 
trary, we regard with exultant admiration the grit, courage, and 
resource of that indomitable city, and are in sympathetic accord with 
its every effort to retrieve its vast misfortune. JBut the issue in the 
present movement is not merel,v to profit San Francisco. The object 
of this enterprise is not to bring quests to the hotels and boarding 
houses of San Francisco, nor to give emplo^anent to San Francisco 
laborers and put money into the pockets of San Francisco merchants, 
but to bring business to the merchants of the United States and to 
profit all the people by the enlargement of trade opportunity. The 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 23 

proposed exposition is not to be a local affair, organized for the 
pecuniary aclvancement of the community in which it is located, but 
a national and international ali'air instituted for the purpose of realiz- 
ing for the Nation the maximum of benefit to be secured from the con- 
struction of the canal. 

We claim that for a world's exposition as outlined herein and for 
the only kind of exposition that would answer the demands of the 
occasion New Orleans is the only city that fulfills every recjuirement. 
I have shown that from the financial standpoint the New Orleans 
proposition is every whit as good as that of San Francisco. From the 
geographical stanclpoint the situation of New Orleans is ideal; from 
the same standpoint the situation of San Francisco is impossible. In 
the essential considerations of location and relation to our own coun- 
try and to the outside world, New Orleans, of all the considerable 
cities of the United States, offers without doubt the best site; San 
Francisco incontestably the worst. This proposition is undebatable. 

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION. 

1 will not consume your time nor tax your patience by a detailed 
description of the relative geographical positions of San Francisco 
and New Orleans. It is known of all men that the former city is oft' 
on the edge of the earth while the latter occupies a central position. 
If your recollection of geography is to any degree indistinct, you may 
readily refresh it by reference to certain descriptive and statistical 
maps which we have distributed with more or less industry. You 
already know, or will know, that San Francisco is more remote and 
more difficult of access from the Isthmus of Panama than any other 
considerable port of the United States; that it is more remote and 
more difficult of access from the centers of population of the United 
States than any other considerable port in tlie United States ; that it 
is more remote and more difficult of access from European countries 
and from the centers of European })opulation than any other con- 
siderable port in the United States; that it is more remote and more 
difficult or access, or will be when the canal is completed, from every 
point in the Central and South American countries than any other 
considerable port in the United States; and finally, that it is more 
remote and more difficult of access than any considerable port of the 
United States from every country that would care to participate in 
the exposition proposed and from nearly every country in the world 
whose trade would be affected by the opening of the canal. 

In order that the proposed exposition shall be a success and serve 
the purpose of its existence, it is indispensable, first, that the maxi- 
mum number of American visitors and exhibitors should participate; 
second, that the maximum number of visitors and exhibitors from 
foreign lands should cooperate; and third, that the maximum inter- 
est should be stimulated in those people and nations whose trade 
relations will be affected and rendered more intimate by the opening 
of the canal. If the proposed exposition should be held m San 
Francisco, not one of these essential prerequisities would be complied 
with. On account of its remote location and the resultant excessive 
outlay in money, time, convenience, and comfort that would be 
entailed by the preposterous pilgrimage to the Golden Gate, only the 
minimum number of visitors and exhibitors could be induced to par- 
ticipate. And even if this were not the case and even if the American 



24 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITIOlSr^ 1915. 

multitudes and the foreign hordes were impervious to fatigue, indif- 
ferent to the waste of time, and reckless of money expenditure, still 
the situation would not be saved, for the very obvious reason that 
the limited transcontinental railroad facilities could not by any 
possibility transport enough people and exhibits to make the occasion 
in truth and in fact a world celebration, commemorating and pro- 
moting a new and universally significant era of trade movement and 
relation. Thus it plainly appears that as a site for an international 
exposition San Francisco is afflicted with peculiar and unique dis- 
ability and is from the physical standpoint wholly impossible. 

TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROADS. 

In this connection it may be pertinent to remark that San Fran- 
cisco's most powerful allies in the present contention are these same 
transcontinental railroad systems, which, let it be remembered, were 
from the beginning the most inveterate and bitter enemies of the 
canal idea and which, if they had been permitted to rule, would have 
forever prevented the consummation of the great enterprise which 
they are now, for their own interests and at the expense of the public, 
so acutely anxious to celebrate. 

RACIAL DIFFERENCE. 

But there is another reason why San Francisco should not be des- 
ignated as the site for the proposed exposition. This reason consti- 
tutes not a physical obstacle, but a moral objection, or a bar inter- 
posed by considerations of public welfare and public pohcy. If there 
were no other reasons for denying the San Francisco appeal in the 
premises, the one I shall now advance would be in itself and alone 
of sufficient force to compel not only such denial but an active dis- 
couragement of holding an international exposition in the city named. 

In my statement of San Francisco's geographical isolation, you 
may have observed that in one particular instance I qualified my 
sweeping assertion. I said that the city in question was more remote 
and more difficult of access than any other considerable port in the 
United States from every country that would care to participate in 
the proposed exposition, and from nearly every country in the world 
whose trade would be affected by the opening of the canal. It is 
hardly necessary to say that this qualified exception had reference 
to the eastern countries of China and Japan. These countries alone ^ 
in all the world are actually nearer to San Francisco than to New 
Orleans, but this relative proximit}^ is entirely physical, and is only 
apparent, not real. Between the people of the foreign countries 
mentioned and the people of CaHfornia rolls a gulf wide and danger- 
ous, if not impassable, a division based upon the fundamental fact 
of racial differences. Under these conditions, it is doubtfid whether 
the races mentioned would care to participate in an exposition held 
in the Pacific coast city; and if they should decline, the principal 
resource of such exposition would be eliminated. On the other hand, 
if China and Japan should participate, the possibilities of friction are 
now as in the past. I make this reference simply with the desire 
to call your earnest attention to this most important phase of the 
exposition matter. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1015, 25 

ADVANTAGES OF NEW ORLEANS. 

Further reference to the maps mentioned, and further consideration 
of surrounding conditions, will demontrate that not one of the fore- 
going objections can be urged against New Orleans as a site for the 
exposition. On the contrary, it will 4)e seen that the southern city 
amply fulfills every essential requisite prescribed. In the first place, 
New Orleans is on good terms with all the world, and hospitably in- 
clined toward all the nations thereof. Its people are cosmopohtan 
in character, and tolerant in disposition, and all the ties of inter- 
national comity will be strengthened by the proposed association 
there. 

In the second place, New Orleans is nearer to and at the same time 
more readily, expeditiously, and economically accessible than any 
other considerable port of the United States from the canal itself, the 
centers of population of the United States, the foreign countries, and 
more particularly those foreign countries which offer the most 
promising and prolific opportunities for American trade expansion. 
There are only two cities making application for the privilege of 
holding this exposition — San Francisco, which is peculiarly and 
uniquely unfitted for the purpose, and New Orleans, which is pos- 
sessed of singular and extraordinary qualifications for the same. On 
the record and evidence, decision must inevitably be given in favor of 
New Orleans, unless that city is afflicted with some disability or 
inability not heretofore disclosed. 

FACILITIES OF NEW ORLEANS. 

It has been charged by our San Francisco friends that New Orleans 
is not able to consummate so great an undertaking as the one pro- 
posed, and the effort has been made, by magnifying the demands of 
the occasion and slighting our ability and resources, to injure our 
chances of securing recognition and to discredit the sincerity of our 
appeal. I appear before you for the purpose of advising you that the 
people of New Orleans are not only profoundly earnest in their pro- 
fessions, but are entirely confident of their ability to handle the matter 
with full success, and pledge themselves, if they are honored with the 
commission, to hold an exposition which will not only reflect credit 
upon the city itself, but will redound to the honor of the Nation at 
large. 

New Orleans is a city of 350,000 inhabitants. Its assessable prop- 
erty value is at present $231,000,000, which represents an increase of 
$91,000,000 durmg the past 10 years. It has 273 miles of paved 
streets, and further extensions are contracted for, and still further 
extensions are in immediate contemplation. The fire department of 
the city consists of 56 companies, with a working force of 397 men, 
which number will soon be augmented. This department operates 
31 steam fire engines, 9 hook-and-ladder trucks, 13 chemical engines, 
and wagons and a hose tower. The sewerage, water, and drainage 
systems of the city are thoroughly modern and efficient. On these 
three systems the city has expended during the period from 1897 to 
1909, inclusive, approximately the sum of $19,000,000. The city has 
now 337 miles of sewers, 3 discharging pumping stations, and 6 elec- 
trically driven and automatically operated intermediate lift pump- 
ing stations. The waterworks system includes mains and pipes laid 



26 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

in 500 miles of streets, with two water-purification and pumping 
plants. The waterworks plant, by taking the water of the Mississippi 
River and treating it by sedimentation and coagulation and, finally, 
by filtration, has a furnishing capacity of 60,000,000 to 65,000,000 
gallons of pure, clear, filtered water per day. 

New Orleans stands third in the list of American ports, and the 
second port, Boston, is so little ahead that our port will soon lead all 
but New York. It may be interesting in this discussion to note that 
the total value of New Orleans exports and imports for the Govern- 
ment fiscal year, ending June 30, 1909, amounted to $196,088,587, as 
against $80,551,403 to the credit of San Francisco during the same 
period; and the total number of vessels clearing in foreign trade from 
New Orleans during the same period was 1,060, as against 360 from 
San Francisco. All of which is shown by a comparative statement 
appended hereto. 

The port of New Orleans has 37 miles of river front and one of the 
finest and most efficiently administered harbors in the world. The 
board of commissioners of the port of New Orleans — a public board — 
operates the river-front facilities, which embrace 26,000 feet of modern 
wharves and 16,000 feet of steel sheds already built, mth 10 miles 
of space available for new w^harves and sheds. These faciUties are 
operated for the benefit of the commerce of the port and not in the 
interest of any private transportation companies, and the service 
is rendered at' the minimum charge to all steamsliips ahke without 
favoritism or discrimination. The city owns its o\\ti belt railroad 
system, which operates its main lines along practically the entire 
river front, and which will in the not distant future encircle the city. 
The belt railroad, with its switches and sidetracks, serves all the 
city wharves, all the railroads, and a lar^e nurnber of private indus- 
tries. Tliis pubhc utihty not only supplies switching service to the 
nine lines of railroads now having terminals in the city, to the thou- 
sands of steamsliips that cast anchor there, and to the multitude of 
individual industries now participating, but it offers the same facili- 
ties upon an equal and nondiscriminating basis of service and charge 
to any and all transportation companies, individuals, and interests 
which may hereafter desire to handle their business at or through 
the port. 

The administration of the port facilities of New Orleans has earned 
from Hon. Herbert Knox Smith, Commissioner of Corporations in 
the Department of Commerce and Labor, the following [commenda- 
tion appearing in his "Report on Water Terminals in the United 
States:" 

GULF COAST HARBORS. 

Traffic conditions in the harbors of the Gnlf of Mexico are somewhat different from 
those on the Atlantic coast. The commercial function is more prominent; several of 
the leading ports are chiefly noteworthy as the termini of southern and western rail- 
roads, and have an exceptionally large proportion of through freight between the 
interior and foreign countries. 

NEW ORLEANS. 

Thi.-^ is one of the most important as well as one of the most interesting harbors in the 
country, particularly in its advanced terminal facilities, its organization, and its meth- 
ods of public administration. It is a river harbor, about 100 miles from the Gulf, but 
ea.sily accessible for ocean vessels. 

Both the commercial and industrial functions of the harbor are important. It has 
about () miles of publicly owned wharves, over 25 in number, and about 15 large steel 



PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 27 

sheds and warehouses. There is a very considerable amount of modern transshipping 
machinery for grain, fruit, and coal. 

The administration is divided into three parts. The State board of commissioners 
for the Orleans levee district has control over the construction and maintenance of 
protective levees (earthen embankments to prevent overflow of the river). The State 
board of commissioners of the port of New Orleans construct, maintain, and regulate 
the public wharves and sheds. The belt railroad commission (a municipal board) has 
built and operates a belt railroad along the entire active water front, about 10.18 miles 
in length, with about 40 industrial sidings or spurs, and makes 17 dock, wharf, and 
export switch connections. It is intended thus to encircle the entire city with a total 
main-line track of about 22 miles. The plan provides that this railroad shall connect 
practically all the important wharf frontage with all the trunk lines entering the city 
and with many industrial establishments. This railroad, in work already completed 
and in extensions definitely provided for, is the best example in the country of a prac- 
tical coordination of rail, industrial, and water business for the benefit of the entire 
community. A merchant or manufacturer on any part of the line of the road can 
receive or send shipments, by direct connection, over any part of the entire transporta- 
tion system, rail and water, of the whole city, including all the trunk lines. The 
public ownership and management of this belt line prevents undue control of a given 
industry or section by any one railroad. 

The excellent public wharf and shed equipment along the water front appears to be 
constructed and maintained with remarkable efficiency. The work of constructing 
wharves and sheds is still in progress. 

Most of the public wharves and sheds are "open." Very few leases of any con- 
siderable length are made, so that the water front is available for general traffic on a 
system of dockage charges. 

*■)(•**■■)«•** 

In general, the physical conditions, control, and organization of the harbor of New 
Orleans are worthy of careful study by other municipalities as an example of a modern 
system of a well-equipped and coordinated harbor with a high degree of public control. 

The city of New Orleans has, during the period 1897-1909, in- 
clusive, expended upon the aforementioned public improvements and 
others not here enumerated, approximately the sum of $35,000,000, 
and it is anticipated that during the next five years the additional 
outlay in these several departments will approximate $28,000,000 
more. All of which is shown in detail by an approximate statement 
appended hereto. 

The street-car system of New Orleans is admittedly one of the 
most efficient, if not the most efficient, in the United States. It covers 
202 miles of track and operates 28 separate and distinct lines com- 
prising more than 400 cars. In answer to a question propounded, 
the president of the railway compan}^ advises me: 

We can not determine our maximum passenger capacity per day, for the reason 
that we have always been able to handle conveniently all those who care to use our 
service. This applies to the large number of people handled during the Mardi 
Gras season, at which time more people are handled than at any other time during 
the year. 

I am unable to give any accurate figures estimating the hotel, 
restaurant, and lodging capacity of the city, for a reason similar to 
the one voiced above by the president of the railway company. 
In spite of the fact that during the past hundred years New Orleans 
has been called upon to entertain and handle huge and numerous 
convocations, its capacity in this regard has not been reached. There 
is every reason and every assurance that we can maintain in the 
future the record we have established in the past, and with the 
available time for preparation at our disposal, there is no doubt 
whatever of our ability to comfortably and satisfactorily house, 
handle, and feed whatever multitude may see fit to accept our 
invitation. 



28 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

The climate of New Orleans is salubrious and its conditions are 
healthful. The temperature from September to May — nine months — ■ 
ranges between the extremes of 40° and 75°, with the mean average 
of about 50°. In the summer months the temperature has reached 
100° but twice during the past 10 years. The healthfulness of the 
climate is strikingly demonstrated by the fact that the number of 
deaths from old age is relatively greater in New Orleans than in any 
other American city. The hospitable disposition of the New Orleans 
people is known the world over, and the facility with which visiting 
crowds are entertained in that city is attested by the millions who 
have from time to time honored us with their presence. 

I do not intend to fatigue your attention by a statistical array. I 
merely outline some of our essential facilities for the purpose of reen- 
forcing our declarations of ability, and in order that you may know 
that we are equipped, both in present possessions and in potential 
resources, with the means necessary to consummate the great exposi- 
tion and to take care of the multitude of people who will attend. 
You can give New Orleans this exposition in the confident assurance 
that it will be administered on large lines by a great city and by a 
people who do things not by halves, but to the limit of entirety, when 
they feel that their honor and duty are involved. 

FOECES AND RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH. 

I am afraid that the ancient misfortunes of the South and the long 
nonparticipation of its people in the swift accumulation of wealth, 
which has marked the progress of other sections of our country, has 
bred in those of our countrymen who are out of touch with our devel- 
opment the habit of thinking slightingly of our ability to do big 
things and of our capacity for comprehensive enterprise. It is true 
that our struggle with constrictive and restrictive conditions has 
been long and painful, and it is true that our progress from desolation 
into comparative prosperity has been slow and without spectacular 
appeal; but I want to say to those who lightly think that a southern 
city can not rise to great occasions in rank with her sister cities of 
the North and East and West that the South of to-day is not the 
South of 40 years ago, nor of 20, nor of 10. Undertakings from 
which a while ago we would have shrunk in trepidation do not af- 
fright us now. We have toiled through the night, but we see the 
morning at hand. We know that in our forests and in our fields, in 
our mineral and oil deposits, in the productive capacity of our soil 
and subsoil, we have immeasurable and inexhaustible sources of 
wealth which, with cultivation and development, will enrich not only 
ourselves, but will add immeasurably to the wealth of the Nation. 

Tnistworthy authorities estimate the productive values in the 
South for the year 1910 at the splendid total of $5,970,000,000. The 
cotton crop alone yields for the year 1910 twice as much as the com- 
bined output of all the gold mines in the world for the same period. I 
do not feel that it is unseemly to glory in the achievements of a 
country which in one year can produce practically $6,000,000,000 in 
value. Especially is exultation excusable in such case, when it is 
remembered that 45 years ago that country was devastated and 
wi-cckeci, and that for 20 years of the 45, it struggled with the most 
serious social and economic problems that ever confronted a people. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 



29 



The record and the results attest that for fortitude, determination, and 
energy the Southern people have no superior in history. It is not as 
if the money of other sections had aided us in making green our waste 
places, as was done for other and more favored portions of our 
country; but alone and unaided, without money or credit, the South 
was forced to work out its own salvation. In those times of travail 
every proposition that the South offered at the money centers was 
declined, while even wild-cat schemes from other sections met with 
prompt favor. The story of ''booms'' and quick bonanzas and the 
fate of many of these which swallowed up hundreds of millions of 
unwary capital, forms no part of Southern history. By honest toil 
and sheer force of will, practically unassisted until within the last 
decade, we have constructed upon the ruins of the old regime a 
wealth-producing system which gives us a place to-day among the 
most progressive people of the world. 

You are now apprised of the basis of our insistent confidence. We 
ask the Congress to share our faith. We want this exposition because 
we can handle it to better advantage than any other city in the 
United States; we want it because it wiU help our city and the South; 
and we want it because we can make it the means of added profit to 
the American people and of increased renown to the American name. 
Thus comes New Orleans, the chief city of the South, requesting the 
privilege of a place in the Nation's confidence and claiming the right 
to utilize its superior advantages and employ its willing force in the 
furtherance of an affair of large national profit and deep national 
concern, 

PORT NOTES. 

[Complied by the secretary of the New Orleans Board of Trade (Ltd.)-] 

For Government fiscal year ending June 30, 1909, vessels cleared from New Orleans 
to foreign countries with a total net tonnage of 2,168,816 tons: 



Imports. 



Exports. 



Total im- 
ports and 
exports. 



New Orleans . . 
San Francisco . 



55,712,027 
49,370,643 



140,376,560 
31,180,760 



196,088,587 
80,551,403 



Vessels cleared in foreign trade. 





Vessels. 


Net ton- 
nage. 


New Orleans , 


1,060 
360 


2,108,816 


San Francisco 


868,937 







30 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

Approxiinate statement of amounts expended in city of New Orleans since 1897 
in different branches of public improvements, and also about what will be expended 
during the next five years, if the reasonable anticipations of different departments 
of the city government are consummated: 



1897 to 1909, 
inclusive. 



1910 to 1915, 
inclusive. 



Sewerage, water, and drainage systems 

Street improvements, including local subsurface drainage. 

Public buildings, city hall, courthouse, schools, etc 

Levee improvements 

Wharves and docks 

Public belt railroad 



$19, 000, 000 
4,000,000 
2,500,000 
6,000,000 
2,500,000 
500,000 



$8,500,000 
10, 000, 000 
1,500,000 
4,000,000 
2,250,000 
1,500,000 



Total . 



34,500,000 



27,750,000 



Total expended from 1897 to 1909, inclusive 834, 500, 000 

To be expended, 1910 to 1915, inclusive 27, 750, 000 

Grand total 62,250,000 

Estimate of manufacturers' record, showing productive values of the Southern States. 

Products of — 

Manufactures $2, 690, 000, 000 

Agriculture 2, 600, 000, 000 

Forests 400,000,000 

Mining 280,000,000 

Total for year 1910 5,970,000,000 

STATEMENT OF MR. MARTIN BEHRMAN, MAYOR OF NEW 

ORLEANS. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. Mr. Chairman, the next speaker is Mayor Martin 
Behrman, of New Orleans. [Applause.] 

Mr. Behrman. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I 
will detain you only a very few minutes. The distinguished gentle- 
man who preceded me has covered the subject so fully that there is 
very little to add. I want to say to my friends from California that 
I am here this morning — and this may seem strange, gentlemen of 
the committee, because some of you are aware that I am prejudiced 
in favor of New Orleans — I am here to join with them this morning. 
I heard the distinguished, eloquent gentleman from California, Mr. 
Kahn, yesterday, arising in his place, ask that the bill, in so far as 
California was concerned, be permitted to die. We want to assure 
you of the heartiest support of the delegation from Louisiana, Mr. 
Kahn, to help you with all matters of bills that may be pending, to 
help them die, to let New Orleans go on with this great work which 
she now wants to do for the Nation. [Laughter and applause.] 

A great deal has been said why the exposition should be held 
at New Orleans. I do not think there is any doubt in the minds of 
right-thinking men why it should be located at a point where the 
great bulk of the people of this Nation can see it at a minimum of 
cost. Unfortunately for California and San Francisco, they are not 
located where the great bulk of the people of this country can visit 
at a minimum of cost. Expositions are not built, as it were, to 
benefit any particular section or any particular city. They are built 
with a view of educating the masses, in order that the peoples of the 
world may come and assemble at one central point and see what the 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 31 

universe has been doing. For that reason, my friends, we have ten- 
dered New Orleans as the place where this exposition can be held, 
and should be held, believing that the great bulk of the peo})le can 
visit it at a cheaper cost than any other section of this countr}'. 

Now, my friends, what are we going to celebrate i We are going 
to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, the greatest feat that 
this Nation or any other nation has accomplished. And where 
should that be celebrated? At the point or city nearest the canal 
which is capable of doing so. My friends, coming to New Orleans 
from any section of this country east of the Rocky Mountains, one 
can take^ a ship at New Orleans, say, on Saturday, and on Wednesday 
evening eat his dinner in Panama. As was said here yesterday by 
Mr. Ellis, with a SlOO bill in your pocket, you may come to New Or- 
leans, see the exposition, see the canal, and go back to your home 
again — all covered by that $100 bill. I do not think our enthusi- 
astic friends from the coast will make that claim. Of course, I 
know that a SlOO bill to the average San Franciscan is a very small 
amount of money; but we fellows down in Louisiana look on $100 
as a big amount. [Laughter.] 

Of course, I know that our friends are talking of the old New 
Orleans when they speak of our inability to handle this proposition. 
Most of you have visited that city. As has just been told you, the 
amount of money spent in public im])rovements is marvelous. We 
have a moral city. We have located in our city 216 churches, 90 
public schools, and 151 private schools, besides a great university. 
I believe if that great commoner, Horace Greeley, was living to-day, 
the advice he gave the young man who came to him and asked him 
where to go to make his fortune, and he told him to ''Go West, young 
man; go West," that would be changed, and he would say, "Go 
South, young man; go South." We want the people to come down 
to Louisiana, not to benefit New Orleans particularly. I know that 
New Orleans will benefit incidentally by having an exposition there; 
but we want the people of the East and the West, and all parts of 
this country, to come and see what we have. We want them to 
come and see the vast number of unimproved acres of land we have 
there, that they may come and settle and make the South the pros- 
perous country we know she will be. 

Now, as to the question of handling the crowds. If there is any 
city in this country that is accustomed to and capable of handling 
crowds, I think New Orleans is that city. Along last April, my 
friends, we had for a week with us the wShriners of tlie United States 
in convention assembled. There were 50,000 or 60,000 of them there, 
and we had them for a week, and any man who visited that conven- 
tion will tell you what a delightful time he had, and how glad he will 
be to c6me back again. Our annual carnival puts us in a position to 
know how to handle crowds. Every carnival, which runs for about 
a week, we handle 50,000 or 60,000 people. Something has been said 
as to hotel accommodations. We have splendid hotel facilities. We 
have the new ' Grunewald, the new^ St. Charles, the De Soto, the 
Montleone, the Cosmopolitan, and several others. There is no doubt, 
my friends, that we will have more of them, and you will find some 
of the very distinguished gentlemen from vSan Francisco, when we get 
the exposition at New Orleans, coming down there and investing 
some of their money to accommodate the crowds that come to New 



32 PROPOSED PAJSTAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

Orleans. There is no doubt about that, because those men out there 
are good, sound business men, and they know a good thing when they 
see it ; so when New Orleans gets this exposition you will find lots of 
money from San Francisco coming down to New Orleans for invest- 
ment. In fact, only a week ago our dispatches showed that some 
business men from California had purchased for investment some of 
our lands. That shows good judgment. I approve, gentlemen. I 
want you to come and see for yourselves. 

I want to file with the committee official statistics — I will not bore 
you with reading them — as to health conditions in New Orleans, and 
then sanitary systems of the city of New Orleans. They speak, as I 
said, about the old New Orleans; they speak about the old open 
gutters, the open sewers. All that is a thing of the past. In the last 
five years we have paved 65 miles of streets, and in every one of them 
the open gutter has been eliminated. I am speaking of what has 
been done only in the last five years, because as to all of the streets 
prior to that the same thing applied; the open gutters have all been 
done away with. We have a magnificent water plant, with a capac- 
ity of 65,000,000 gallons, pumping now 18,000,000; a magnificent 
drainage system, that makes it possible now for New Orleans to build 
20-foot cellars. We have the new Grunewald, with a 14-foot cellar, 
and the Whitney National Bank, with a 20-foot cellar, showing you 
how different conditions are now from what those who do not love 
us as much as they ought to, try to make you believe — that we have 
a city that is unclean, that is unhealthy, and is unfit. Those are not 
the facts. We have an ideal city. We have a city of 300,000 people 
who want this exposition, and, my friends, if you knew what this 
meant for the people of that State, to tax themselves $6,500,000, and 
then out of their pockets contribute practically $2,000,000 — if you 
knew what that meant to them, I do not believe that there would be a 
vote in this committee against New Orleans — the sacrifice these people 
have made, which I do not believe they will ever get back in dollars 
and cents, or in any way except their city and State pride. W^e have 
not got $17,000,000. We have, however, what Congress or the com- 
mittee said we should have. If I understand the proposition, when 
we left New Orleans there was a bill pending before one of the com- 
mittees of the House designating that the city that wanted the expo- 
sition should put up $5,000,000. At a suggestion from a member of 
the committee it was increased to $7,500,000. Our Congressman was 
asked, ' ' What will Louisiana do ? Will they meet that V That was 
all we were asked to do, and we are here to tell you that we are pre- 
pared to m^eet the requirements of that bill. 

In so far as this bill is concerned, it provides for an exposition to 
be held at New Orleans under national control. It provides for the 
appointment of a board of commissioners, to be appointed by the 
President of the United States, and, in so far as the amount is con- 
cerned, the Secretary of the Treasury is to judge and to advise the 
commission when it has qualified. So, my friends, we have covered 
every requirement that the committee asked us to, and we are here 
to ask you this morning to do what the gentleman from San Fran- 
cisco has asked you, let his bill die, and report favorably on the bill 
for New Orleans. I thank you very much for your attention. [Ap- 
plause.] 

The Chairman. Before you take your seat, I want to ask you a 
question. Gov. Sanders yesterday outlined the circumstances under 



PROPOSED PAXAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 



33 



which you voted your bond issue of $6,500,000. I would Hke to ask 
you, as mayor, what assurance you have that you can dispose of these 
bonds at par ? 

Mr. Behrman. We have assurance of two of the leading banks in 
New Orleans that those bonds will be disposed of at par, and will file 
with the committee, if you so desire, a statement from these two 
banks. 

The Chairman. We prefer to have that filed. 

Mr. Behrman. I will see that you shall hav6 it. 

Mr. Murphy. What is the difference, if any, between the hotel 
prices during any celebration, such as the Mardi Gras, and when there 
is no celebration ? 

Mr. Behrman. About the time when the Shriners' convention 
came there was great complaint about overcharges by hotels and 
restaurants. We made the hotels and restaurants file schedules 
with us of prices of rooms in the hotels which they would not go 
beyond. That will be taken care of at every big celebration we have. 

health conditions in new ORLEANS. 

The reputation for unhealthiness which has injured this cit}'^ in 
the past, and which still clings to the fossihzed mind of some, was 
acquired in the long ago, and it is wrong to refer to the present in 
terms fitting only for the distant past. Much of our misfortune, 
and the persistency of our bad reputation, comes, we believe, from 
thoughtless allusion, through habit, to conditions correctly remem- 
bered but no longer obtaining. New Orleans is in fact an ideal city, 
almost surrounded by water and continuously fanned by balm}^ 
breezes from the lakes, the river, and the Gulf. Its summers are 
cooler and more pleasant than the same season in cities north of 
us (deaths from excessive heat being a neghgible quantity in our 
mortality statistics). While the day temperature here may at 
times be 90° to 96°, there are more summer days at 76° to 90° than 
may be found in any large city in the valle}' of the Mississippi. The 
special significance of a range of 17° on the average between the 
mean and extreme of our climate speaks eloquently for the comfort 
and health of this city. The foUowdng table of convparison is made 
from Bulletin 2 of the United States Agricultural Weather Bureau : 



Cities. 


Mean. 


Maximum. 


Range. 


Cincinnati . 


75 
68 
70 
81 
76 


101 
97 
98 
96 

104 


26 


Chicago 


29 


New York 


28 


New'Orleans 


17 


St. Louis 


28 







Ninety degrees in the shade, unbearable in many cities, is not more 
than uncomfor.tably warm in New Orleans. This city enjoys the 
advantage of atmospheric conditions which admits of great warmth 
wdthout much discomfort, while the city is far enough south for its 
winters to be mild, and temperate snow in New Orleans is a curiosity, 
not seen as yet b}^ the younger members of the present generation. 
The one time humidity of the city has been relieved by drainage. 
With the redemption of surrounding swamps, its once dreaded malaria 

73172—11 3 



34 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 



lias progressively diminished and practically disappeared, caused by 
destruction of breeding places of the Anopliele mosquitoes. 

Relative to morbidity statistics, we seriously doubt if any city of 
the same size can boast of so little typhoid fever, which never in the 
history of the city has been epidemic, while infectious and contagious 
diseases as a rule are of a very mild type. New Orleans has and is 
still unjustly credited with being a malarious district, but the official 
figures from the record of the health office refutes this charge, and by 
so doing proves such statements to be of a vicious and maligning 
travesty on truth. The following table shows the number of deaths 
yearly from malaria during the past 10 years. In it are included 
deaths from nonresident's brought here from all over the State and 
adjoining States for treatment in the Charity Hospital. 



Years. 


Deaths. 


Years. 


Deaths. 


1900 


195 
116 
99 
81 
68 


1905 




48 


1901 


1906 


39 


1902 . 


1907 


38 


1903 


1908 


64 


1904 


1909 


44 









Wlien a city's healthfulness is being discussed, infant mortality, 
that uixerring barometer, must always be considered, and we proudly 
invite all interested to scrutinize the following table from official 
record in the city health office : 

Mortality per 1,000 of population. 



Years. 


Mortality 
rate. 


Years. 


Mortality 
rate. 


1900 


4.22 
3.30 
3.70 
3.37 
3.43 


1905 


3.41 


1901 


1906 


3.18 


1902 


1907 


3.67 


1903 


1908 


3. 30 


1904 


1909 


2.84 









That New Orleans death rate has become steadily lowered in the 
past centiu-y is evident from official records offered. A glance at the 
following figures will show how we gradually emerged from unsatis- 
factory conditions, and how wrong it is now to refer to the present in 
terms fit only for the distant past. 

The general mortality rate in the various decades of the past cen- 
tury is presented as follows : 

New Orleans general death rate per 1,000 of population. 





Rate. 


Death tend- 
ency. 


Year 1808 


45.25 

52.95 
48.55 
63.55 
51.59 
60.49 
40.22 
37.77 
27.62 
27.05 
21.14 


Upward. 


Ten years: 

1810-1819 


Do. 


1820-1829 


Downward. 


1830-1839 


Upward. 


1840-1849 


Downward. 


1850-1859 


Upward. 


1860-1869 


Downward. 


1870-1879 


Do. 


1880-1889 


Do. 


1890-1899 . .. 


Do. 


1900-1909 


Do. 







PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 



35 



During the first 50 years the death tendency was sometimes upward, 
sometimes downward, oftener upward. Since 1860 the tendency has 
been persistently downward, a phenomenal change; stiH our commer- 
cial rivals are heralding to the world the unhealthfulness of New 
Orleans. 

What a reflection on their judgment, their general knowledge of 
health affairs, or their integrity. • For years New Orleans has claimed, 
and justly so, that in order to effect a just comparison of its death 
rate with that of northern, eastern, or western cities the colored mor- 
tality should be excluded. The comparison of the gross death rates 
of different populations msij lead to very erroneous conclusions. 
Comparisons must be made between similar classes, and important 
facts back of the general figures must be ascertained. The chart 
below presents the matter in a clear and forcible manner. It is repro- 
duced from an interesting monograph on the general death rate of 
large American cities by Frederick L. Hoffman, of Newark, N, J., a 
distinguished statistician. 



Mesjiprim 

46 

43 
42 

40 







1671 1! 7i 74 IS 76 17 73 19 SO SI 3^32 $4 85 'S6 37 88 S9 IS909/ 3? W '$4 '9S ■% 97 98 5 


91 


W 


m 02 '03 1904 






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It will be seen that the white death rate of southern cities for the 
past 36 years has been about the same as that of northern cities, the 
expressed lines being interwoven save in two years, 1878 and 1891, 
the former shomng a high mortality for southern cities as the result 
of an epidemic of yellow fever, and the latter a high mortality for 
northern cities due mainly to influenza. 

Whenever there has been a persistent tendency downward or 
upward in the North, East, or West, the white population of southern 
cities has shown a similar tendency. The colored mortality has not 
only been excessive, but has borne no relation whatever to the white- 
mortality curve, bein^ on the ascending scale at times when the 
white mortality was clearly on the decrease. The mortality curve 
of the city in which they live, is, after all, what interests most people, 



36 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

as indicating progress or retrogression in health matters and estab- 
lishing the local average of life expectancy. Improvement in the 
colored death rate has been retarded by the reckless and improvi- 
dent ways of the race and their utter disregard of all hygienic and 
sanitary laws. Several causes must be credited for the city's pres- 
ent low mortality, the great works of public improvement — sewerage, 
drainage, and a pure water supply— have doubtless contributed in 
the largest measure. We must remember, however, that the im- 
provement in mortality statistics began before the city ever touched 
the benefits of these sanitary boons. Other causes must be credited, 
among them improvement in quarantine methods, excluding pesti- 
lence from our shore, enlightenment of the masses in sanitary mat- 
ters; insuring greater attention to personal hygiene and better care 
of the household and surroundings. 

In 1909, the death rate was — for white population, 15.52; for col- 
ored population, 25.24; total, 18.15. And with deaths of nonresi- 
dents excluded: For white population, 14.01; for colored population, 
22.03; total, white and colored, 16.18. 

The general death rate compares favorably with that of other large 
communities. To the white home seeker "new" New Orleans offers 
a life expectancy equal to that of the most favored large cities in the 
world. The huge billows and violent surgings of the past in the 
mortality curve has gone, never to return; the lessening waves are of 
lower and lower crest as they approach the near-by shore of perfect 
health. 

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES O'CONNOR, OF NEW ORLEANS, LA. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. Mr. Chairman, the next speaker will be the Hon. 
James O'Connor, a member of the State Legislature of Louisiana. 

Mr. O'CoNNOE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I 
come before this committee to add what little one might have to say 
in addition to what has already been said in behalf of New Orleans 
as the logical site to hold a great exposition to celebrate the opening 
of the canal that will marry the two great oceans that wash the shores 
of the American Continent. I realize, gentlemen, how difficult it is 
to even glean a field that has been reaped by the distinguished gentle- 
men who have preceded me. But, just as Ruth commended her Boaz, 
so may I secure your attention by gathering a few points left unnoted 
and bring them within your vision. 

It is true, gentlemen, that the exposition held in the city of New 
Orleans in 1884 and 1885 was a failure from a financial standpoint 
and that that failure resulted in some money loss to the National 
Government. But the city of New Orleans in 1884 was, compara- 
tively speaking, as unprepared to hold an exposition as she is pre- 
pared to hold one to-day, and it is safe to say that if there is a city on 
the American Continent where an exposition can be held success- 
fully, from a financial standpoint, that city is the city of New Orleans. 
In 1884, my friends, the State of Louisiana was in the slough of 
despond. All was lost, apparently, but honor. Stricken by war, by 
famine, by pestilence, disease, and overflow, she appeared to be 
tottering to her destruction and fall; but only appeared to be so, my 
friends, for, notwithstanding the Latin character of the people of 
Louisiana, they are intensely American and ring true to our highest 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 37 

ideals. Like Milton, tried at once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, 
blindness, and darkness, meditated undisturbed by the obscene 
tumult which raged all around him, a song so holy and so sublime 
that it would not have misbecome the lips of those ethereal virtues 
whom he saw with that inner eye which no calamity could ever 
darken, flinging down upon the jasper pavements their crowns of 
amaranth and gold, Louisiana, in her hour of trial, of misery and of 
woe, brought out an epic in the history of this country which should 
be one of the greatest, brightest chapters for our children and our 
children's children to read. My friends, it was in the night of despair 
that Louisiana erected that magnificent system of levees with which 
the famous dikes of Holland can not compare. It was during that 
awful period, my friends, that we rose to heights of morality seldom 
attained by any people. We defeated the lottery company of that 
State, notwithstanding it had offered the sum of $1,250,000 to that 
State — an amount, my friends, equivalent to its total taxation at that 
time. Oh, my friends, do you blame a Louisianian when he goes 
forth and says, ''I come from a State which believes that 'rags are 
royal raiment when worn for virtue's sake?'" We have rung true, 
my friends, to every ideal held high in the esteem of the American 
people. 

Up to 1898 the total assessments for the State of Louisiana were 
but $240,000,000. One hundred and iort^r millions of that was 
located within the city of New Orleans, leaving $100,000,000 to rep- 
resent all of the wealth — or all of the poverty — of the rural sections. 
My friends, in 1884 New Orleans was like a remote South American 
village. To-day the assessments of the city of New Orleans are 
approximately what the assessment of the entire State was in 1898. 
We have the best lighted city in the world, miles and miles of mag- 
nificently paved streets and splendid boulevards, river-dock facihties 
that challenge the admiration of the engineering world, and beautiful 
parks where nature-loving artists find all that their minds can seek 
comfort and consolation in. And, side by side with one of these 
parks are the plains of Chalmette, consecrated forever to American 
glory and American bravery. And, I believe, it behooves the gen- 
tlemen of Congress to so arrange matters that the descendants of 
Jackson and his heroes and their countrymen may stand with bowed 
heads, like the peasants on the field when they heard the angelus, and 
bring back the tender memories of this Republic with bowed heads, 
and at the same time celebrate another glorious event in the history 
of this country. 

My friends, we have the logical site for that exposition for a thou- 
sand thousand reasons, because, stripped of all sophistry, this is an 
exposition for the American people. North and South America, and 
we want it almost exclusively for the Americans and those Europeans 
who will come to us. For I do not believe that even the Californians 
would wish to have the hordes of the Orient pour in at their gates. 
We have the logical site, as has been clearly demonstrated here 
to-day, and we want you to come down and see our Cabildo, where 
the greatest land transaction in the history of all the world was 
completed. We want you to come down and see our beautiful, 
beautiful sugar plantations, and we want all of our countrymen to 
come and see our rice fields, where the rice bursts into bloom through 
the rippling waves. We want you, my friends, to come down and 



38 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITIOlSr, 1915. 

bring your families and your friends and see our orange groves, 
where grow the juiciest oranges that ever grew. We want all Ameri- 
cans who have ever read Longfellow's beautiful Evangeline to come 
and see our Teche country, where the oaks and the magnolias inter- 
lace their boughs and dream of the days and the nights of Evange- 
line's forlorn love for her Gabriel. We want you, my friends, to 
come down and witness our carnival, and you will see a sight which 
you can see nowhere else on this earth, where the high and the low, 
the rich and the poor, the great and the small, all come together. 

In using the words "poor people" I have struck the chord of a song 
that I have sung early and late. It is a song that I have sung by 
night and by day. My father before me, and my brothers who have 
gone to join him in their everlasting rest, were laboring men, and 
toiled with their hands, and when I speak for the poor people, not of 
my city, but of the world, I but answer the cry of my blood; I sing 
the song of my cult; I sing the song of my creed. If this exposition 
is worthy of national recognition, it should be in the interests of the 
masses of the people of this land. That exposition should be located, 
regardless of the claims of New Orleans or Frisco, at that point where 
the masses of the people, the poor people, who make up your Army 
and your Navy, who support your schools and your churches and all 
your institutions that make for government and civihzation — ^it should 
be located at that point where the masses, not of my city, not of Mr. 
Kahn's city, but of your districts, gentlemen, each and every one of 
you, and the districts of all the gentlemen in the Halls of Congress, 
can reach it cheaply, comfortably, conveniently, because every dollar 
of expense put upon a poor man by the act of Congress is an unneces- 
sary tax, and would be rightly so considered by the American people. 
J^y friends, my song is about ended; my theme wiU shortly die 
into the echoes. But I can not let this occasion pass without insisting, 
my friends, as I said before, that higher than and above any claim 
San Francisco may have, higher and above any claims the city of 
New Orleans may have — yes, if you will, higher than the claims that 
both cities taken together may have — rise the claims of the masses 
of the poor people of this country, because, as Abraham Lincoln, 
the greatest of all our Americans, said, "God must have loved them, 
he made so many of them." They are your countrymen, they are 
your countrj^women, and their rights transcend the rights or interests 
of Frisco and New Orleans put together. One hundred dollars, as 
the mayor of the city of New Orleans has said, will enable a poor 
man to go and see that exposition. 

All the people of this great Repubhc have their aspirations, and the 
crudest thing, in my mind, is to educate a man up to the wonders of the 
earth, to permit him to believe that other eyes feast on the art treasures 
of the world, to let him read of those things he will never see; and, 
my friends, if that once comes home to the poor people of this country, 
that there was an opportunity open to Congress by which tliey could 
not only see the historical Southland and the city of New Orleans, 
with all of its tender associations and recollections — if they once 
come to the conclusion that it was within their grasp to sail over the 
Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, if they once grasp the idea that 
they could have gone over the very waters sailed by Columbus and 
Balboa and Pizarro and Cortez, and because of any action on the part 
of Congress making those things too expensive they were cheated 



PROPOSED PAiSTAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 39 

out of it, do you expect to have grateful admiration from such peo- 
ple ? I sa}^ it, and, my friends, I say it from the bottom of my heart, 
that your duty hes in the direction of helping out the men who, as I 
said before, have been given those aspirations by common-school 
education, which it should be the duty of the Government to try to 
gratify. I remember that one of the relatives I just referred to, who 
was called, in the parlance of that particular vocation, a stone cutter, 
had gone to school like myself; that he had his aspirations, and vnth 
his friends left New Orleans and went to Chicago on a $10 rate, round 
trip, and he came back, and that was their talk for years. 

So, if I may repeat it, give them the opportunity which comes to 
people but once in a lifetime — give them tliis chance to satiate them- 
selves, as it were, with the beauty and the glory that can be unfolded 
to the mind's eye in the shape of the matcliless creations that have 
come down through all the ages. Give them an opportunity to say 
that they have not hved their lives in vam. Give them that one 
great chance in the eventide of their lives, and when the sun is going 
down on their existence forever, to reflect that this great, benign, 
beneficent, great, great Government accorded them that wonderful 
opportunity of attendmg an exposition in the city of New Orleans, 
and they will remember, my friends, and probably repeat the beau- 
tiful lines uttered by one of the oldest and sweetest, if not the greatest, 
of singers : 

Let Fate do her worst, there are rehcs of joy, 
Bright dreams of the past she can not destroy, 
That come in a nighttime of sorrow and care, 
To bring back the featmes that joy used to wear. 

Oh, long, long be my heart with such memories filled, 
Like a vase in which roses have once been distilled; 
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will. 
But the scent of the roses will cUng to it still. 

Do but this, my friends; decide this point, as I said before, not 
because San Francisco is competing for it, but decide that it should 
be located in New Orleans because it is the point where all of the 
people — your countrymen and your countrywomen — can go, and 
then you will have done noble things. 

Let us do noble things, 

Not dream them all day long, 

And so make life, death, and that vast forever 

One grand, sweet song. 

[Applause.] 

STATEMENT OF REV. DR. GILCHRIST, OF NEW ORLEANS, LA. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. The next speaker will be the Rev. Dr. Gilchrist, of 
New Orleans. 

Mr. Gilchrist. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, it 
is my very pleasant experience this morning to give the testimony of 
a northerner who has enjoyed the delightful experience of a residence 
in the city of New Orleans for the past five years, and merely to add a 
word confirmatory to what has been put forth in this very masterly 
array of facts emphasizing the points which make it desirable for the 
location of this great exposition in our city. 

I have found, during my residence in the city of New Orleans, a 
people whom I consider to be among the bravest of the earth, because 
they are a people who have learned to smile through their tears. 



40 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

Charmed by the almost unending sunshine, they present a cheerful- 
ness of disposition that always expresses itself in a degree of hospi- 
tality that arouses within the visitor an earnest and ardent desire to 
come there again. I have discovered them also a very progressive 
people. In the development of the city during my apparently short 
residence there the transformation that has taken place is nothing 
less than remarkable. All that has been said concerning the ability 
of New Orleans to handle large gatherings effectively I have wit- 
nessed with my own eyes, and I wish to especially emphasize one 
point that seems to me very significant, as bearing upon the efficiency 
mth which they handle these crowds, that during the last carnival 
season, when there were assembled together large and good-natured 
crowds numbering upward of fifty to one hundred thousand people on 
our streets at one time, after the carnival season was over, it was 
discovered that not t>ne case of pocket picking was ojB&cially reported 
to the police of that city. That, to my mind, shows the sMU and the 
surveillance of those having in care the protection of the safety and 
guarding the rights of those who come into our midst. 

Of course, there is enough in the experience which one derives in 
the time which I have resided in the city of New Orleans to give 
wings to flights of eloquence. I have felt the charm of its gracious 
hospitality, I have felt the splendid challenge of its rising civiliza- 
tion. I have felt and become intensely interested in what I conceive 
to be the greatest factor of possibility for the development of a vast 
region, to contribute to the vast material resources of this country, 
unsurpassed elsewhere to-day throughout the length and breadth of 
this great land. I have found the health conditions of New Orleans 
to be everything that could be desired. In my own_ family expe- 
rience, I may say — and I think it is important as bearing upon that 
which we have to consider here — during my residence I have em- 
ployed a physician less in my family than during any other corre- 
sponding antecedent period, or one twice as long, in the history of 
my family experience elsewhere. 

I have felt, also, something which perhaps lends only a touch of 
sentiment to what we are considering here, and yet which seems to 
me to be provocative of interest and presents an inviting aspect to 
those who might look in our direction, and that is that I find that 
the perpetual sunshine is reflected in the temperament and the char- 
acter of the people who will be the hosts of this exposition, if Con- 
gress is kind enough to grant it to us. 

I beg to say that the climate of New Orleans is eminently satis- 
factory the year around, and the perpetual sunshine absolutely for- 
bids ever writing what is known as "blue laws," with emphasis upon 
the color, upon our statute books. Summer and winter I have resided 
there, the whole 12 months through, and I have discovered that the 
average temperature during what is known as the heated season is 
about 80°. In the evening we have the soft, cooling breezes floating 
over our city from the Gulf of Mexico, tempered by the vast body 
of'waters that surrounds our city, and I have not found living there 
during the summer to be in the slightest degree uncomfortable. 
Only twice in 30 years, I believe, the weather statistics show, has the 
thermometer ever reached as high a point as 100°, and those on two 
successive days; whereas it was almost my constant experience 
in the Northern States, New York'and New England, and in northern 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 41 

towns and cities, to find at least once during ever^ summer the 
thermometer rising above 100°, and only once or twice during my 
five years' residence there has the thermometer reached 95° in the 
shade. I believe that the records of the health bureau there in our 
city will show that not over 12 cases of heat prostrations have 
occurred during the past five years. These things are important, 
worthy of serious consideration, in view of the fact that there seems 
to prevail throughout the North an impression that New Orleans is 
a most undesirable city to visit during the heated term, which impres- 
sion, I would like to remove, if possible, by stating to you the results 
of my own personal experience. These are important facts; they are 
the specific things which we have to consider in locating a vast 
enterprise of that sort. I can say, also, that as a result of my five 
years' experience in New Orleans I know of no city that I have ever 
visited where one could look forward to a life of permanent residence 
with greater anticipated joy and satisfaction than the city of New 
Orleans, and if it tnus realizes such a high degree of desirability as 
a city for permanent residence, it certamly ought to meet every 
requirement in that regard for the temporary residence enjoyed by 
those who would visit this great exposition. 

I also beg to invite your attention this morning, gentlemen, to 
another feature which I think is worthy of your serious consideration, 
and which ought to be presented finally before those who will even- 
tually pass upon the disposition of this problem. It is to be pre- 
sumed that in locating an enterprise of this sort we ought to be 
governed by what we beheve to be the vox popuh — the voice of the 
people. An exposition is conceived for the purpose of bringing 
together a practical expression and exhibition of the great achieve- 
ments in arts and industries, in mechanical inventions, in trade 
relations, and so forth, and it is our good fortune to be able to present 
to you this morning for your consideration a map which conveys 
some very interesting statistics. Craving 3^our mdulgence for a 
moment, I would Uke to point out to you what is here presented for 
your serious consideration. These pins each represent an indorse- 
ment — a petition from some trade or industrial organization — 
indorsing the proposition that the exposition should be held in the 
city of New Orleans. These are over 3,000 in number. They 
represent something above 12,000,000 people, and it is worthy of 
observation that, considering the accessibihty of New Orleans as the 
logical point, as we come nearer to illustrating the desu^e to have 
the exposition located at the most accessible place, making it a better 
place for the exhibition of the products which these various organiza- 
tions would have there on exhibition, those wliich are nearest are 
most numerous, and you see that, following the fine of a circle which 
might be drawn, and has been drawn, in order to illustrate the fact 
that New Orleans is the logical point, that those falling within that 
radius, as you keep extending it, are the most numerous; and yet, 
when you come to the State of Pennsylvania and to the State of New 
York, where' you have these clusters of organizations in the various 
cities, you will discover that the number almost surpasses what we 
could ordinarily expect, and what we had originally even scarcely 
dared hope, showing the desire of the great trade centers of the 
United States of America to have the exposition located at New 
Orleans as the most accessible and the logical point. 



42 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Another interesting feature which it is well to bear in mind is that 
even from the distant State of Montana, up here in North and South 
Dakota, away over here in Colorado, and even as far west as Utah, 
we have these indorsements, and we have the originals of these 
indorsements here on fde, arranged alphabeticall}^, in order to for- 
tify and to give evidence that the assertion which we make and 
exhibit here by this map is absolutely true. 

Mr. Nelson. In Utah you have the indorsement of the church, I 
presume ? 

Mr. Gilchrist. Not of the church. These all represent trade 
and business organizations. 

Mr. Murphy. You are familiar with these pins, are you ? 

Mr. Gilchrist. Yes, sir. 

Mr. Murphy. Are these pins placed on each city and town where 
the indorsement originated '^ 

Mr. Gilchrist. Yes. 

Mr. Murphy. I see you have one there from Licking, Mo., which 
is in my district. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. If 3^ou will permit him, I think Mr. Thompson 
can answer your question. 

Mr. Murphy. I see you have one in Licking, Mo. 

Mr. Thompson. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, if you will just 
excuse me a moment, these indorsements were provoked by our 
executive committee. Letters were sent throughout the country. 
No man went into the country; we sent no missionary, but we 
simply sent letters. 

Mr. Murphy. I say, you have one from Licking, Mo. I wanted 
to know what indorsement it was. 

Mr. Thompson. If you will allow me, I will read them to you. 

Aurora, board of trade; Butler, commercial club; Butterfield, berry growers' ship- 
ping asst)ciation; Cameron, commercial club; Cape Girardeau, commercial club; 
Clarksville, Calumet Farmers' Club; Clinton, business men's association; Dixon, 
Frisct) Commercial Show; Duenweg, commercial club; Ferguson, city of Ferguson; 
Fordland, commercial club; Fredericktown, commercial club; Hannibal: City coun- 
cil, ct)mmercial club, North Missouri Millers' Association; Harrisonville, Cass County 
Fair Association; Hawk Point, business men's league; Holden, 1925 Club; Independ- 
ence: Commercial clul), retail grocers' and butchers' association; Jefferson City, com- 
mercial club; Joplin: Commercial club, retail merchants' association; Kansas City: 
Real estate exchange, city of Kansas City, board of trade, Kansas City Fruit and Pro- 
duce Exc-hange, live stock exchange; Kirksville, city council; Koshkonong, commer- 
cial club; Lockwood, Dade County Agricultural and Mechanical Association; Man- 
hattan, business men's association; Neosho, commercial club; Parma, commercial 
club; Peirce City, fruitgrowers' association; Rich Hill, city council; St. Charles, citi- 
zens' improvement association; Savannah, commercial club; St. Joseph, retail gro- 
cers, butchers, and bakers' association; St. Louis: Building and Loan Association of 
Missouri, master ])ainters' and decorators' association, retail druggists' association, the 
association of master plumbers, business men's association, Carondelet Business Men's 
Association, cotton exchange, Interstate IMerchants' Association, lumberman's ex- 
change, merchants' exchange. The Million Population Club, Missouri Division, T. P. A., 
Missouri Manufacturers' Association, National Metal Trades Association, real estate ex- 
change, shoe manufacturers' and jobbers' association, South Broadway Merchants' and 
Manufacturers' Association, West End Business Men's Association, Western Commer- 
cial Travelers' Association; Sedalia: Business men's association, Missouri State Fair; 
Springfield, clearing-house association; Steffansville: Grange No. 307, Grange No. 304; 
Tilden, commercial club; Versailles, board of trade; Warrensbnrg, commercial club; 
Webb City, commercial club; Windsor, commercial club; Wright City, Warren 
County Fair Association. 

I desire at this point to file an index of this map. 

The Chairman. You have tlie original indoi-sements there? 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 43 

Mr. Thompson. We have the autograph indorsements from the 
various organizations. 

Mr. Gilchrist. Just one word in conclusion. Making a statement 
from personal experience to remove what seems to be a popular 
impression regarding the undesirability of New Orleans from cli- 
matic and health considerations, I wish to say that if 12,000,000 of 
people gathered together in these various organizations and, located 
as they are located, all with unanimity voice their sentiment that 
New Orleans is the most accessible and the logical place, the most 
desirable place to make their exhibits, it seems to be only a fair and 
proper inrerence, and 1 think does not fall under any charge of being 
a flight of the imagination, that they voice the sentiment of fully 
75,000,000 of the population of this country, because the trades are 
usually the thermometers or the indices for the expression of the will 
of the people. It seems to me that this is very impressive and 
worthy of serious consideration, and as such I commend it to your 
honorable judgment. I thank you for your kind and courteous 
attention. [Applause.] 

(Thereupon, at 12 o'clock noon, the committee adjourned until 
tomorrow, Thursday, January 12, 1911, at 10 o'clock a. m.) 

(The following were submitted by Mayor Martin Behrman, of New 
Orleans :) 

Sanitary Systems op the City of New Orleans, 
waterworks. 

ConHtruction commeiiced: 1905. 

Went into operation: 1908. 

Source of supply: Mississippi River. 

Waterworks intake: Extreme upper end of city. 

System of purification: Sedimentation, coagulation, filtration. 

Coagulants: Lime and sulphate of iron. 

Distribution system: Four-inch pipes to 48-inch mains; pipes and mains, 510 miles; 
valves, 4,775; hydrants, 4,900. 

Main pumping station: Three 40,000,000-gallon low lift centrifugal pumps, 1 
20,000,000-gallon low lift centrifugal pump, 4 23,000,000-gallon high lift pumping 
engines, 2 150-kilowatt electric generators, (i 400 horsepower water tube boilers, with 
up-to-date attachments. 

Filter gallery: Ten rapid American sand and gravel fdters. 

Head house: Controlling passage of water to reservoirs and filters and regulating 
application of coagulants. 

Capacity of pumping system: 97,000,000 gallons per diem. 

Capacity of fdters: 63,000,000 gallons per diem. 

Present daily consumption: 10,000,000 gallons per diem. 

Pressure, direct: Average in business section, 65 pounds; average in distant points 
of system, 45 pounds. 

Site of waterworks plant: City block 26, or about 70 acres. 

Cost of system: To date, 18,000,000. 

SEWERAGE. 

Construction commenced: 1903. 
Went into operation: 1907. 
Separate system for sewerage. 

Gravity and- lift system, discharging into Mississippi River at lower end of city. 
Main sewerage pumping stations, operated by steam, 2. 
Automatic electrically-operated low lift pumping stations, 7. 
Mains, subraains, and sewer pipe, 350 miles. 
Average capacity of discharge pumps, 80,000,000 gallons. 

Present daily discharge 25,000,000 gallons, of which 12,000,000 gallons is under 
drainage, reducing saturation of soil and atmosphere. 
Cost of system to date, 15,000,000. 



44 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

DRAINAGE. 

Construction commenced: 1896. 

Went into operation: 1900. 

System: Gravity and pumpage and final discharge into tide; level water; low level 
open and unlined; wood lined; lined and covered; canals and subsurface drains; 
leA^eed high level outfall canals. 

Stations and pumps: One central electric pumping station, 5,000 horsepower; 
electrically operated pumping stations, 6; steam driven pumping stations, 1. 

Pumping capacity: 5,000 cubic feet per second; equal to 3,200,000,000 gallons per 
day. 

Canals: Open and unlined, 39.3 miles; wood lined, 5.6 miles; masonry lined and 
covered, 18.8 miles; total, 63.7 miles. 

Subsurface street drains: 10-inch to 30-inch terra-cotta pipes, 195 miles. 

Cost of system: To date, $6,000,000. 

N. B. — The above is giving first-class drainage now; further extensions for perfect- 
ing the system and meeting the demands of the growth of the city will be carried 
forward continuously during the next four years, 15,500,000 having been made avail- 
able therefor. 



Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions, 

House of Representatives, 

Thursday, January 12, 1911. 

The committee met at 10 a. m., Hon. William A. Rodenberg 
(chairman) presiding. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. Mr. Chairman, we are now ready to proceed. I 
will now introduce as the first speaker Dr. E. B. Craighead, president 
Tiilane University. 

STATEMENT OF DE. E. B. CRAIGHEAD, PRESIDENT TULANE 
UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS, LA. 

Ml". Craighead. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, 
I think I voice the sentiments of the entire New Orleans delegation 
when I declare to you that we shall remember to our dying days 
not only you, Mr. Cliairman, but all the members of this committee, 
largely because I venture to hope for your decision in favor of the 
logical point, and also because of your monumental patience. You 
have given us all a fair hearing, and I am sure you are going to give 
us a square deal. 

In the brief space allotted to me I must speak promptly, perhaps 
bluntly, and if I assail the claims of San Francisco it is not oecause 
I hold any prejudice against the splendid people of- California, or 
against their marvelous metropolis. On the contrary, aU my pre- 
dilections are in favor of California. I can not boast that I am a 
son of California, but my father was one of the Forty-niners and 
lived a while in California, returned to Missouri via Panama and 
New York, and all his days he longed to return to California — to 
that enchanted realm, that realm of romance. I can not, therefore, 
say anything against California. 

We are here to discuss a great national issue, not to witness a fight 
between San Francisco and New Orleans. There is only one ques- 
tion at issue, and that is the question of conferring the largest good 
at the least expense upon the largest number of American people. 
Is this grand conception, gentlemen, to be degenerated into a mere 
advertising scheme to boom San Francisco or New Orleans, to attract 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 45 

rich and generous tourists to fill empty hotels and boarding houses 
with spendthrift patrons, to swell the coffers of railroad magnates? 
Far from it. If you will pardon me, as I am afraid I will run over 
my time, I am going to read just for a few minutes what I have to 
say", making a brief extract from an article which I prepared in reply 
to the president of the great University of California. 

What, then, shall we celebrate ? An event of untold significance 
for the future of Pan America and the world; the accomplishment 
of the greatest material task ever imdertaken on the glo})e; the 
most imperious assertion yet made gootl of man's lordship over all 
the earth; the fulfillment of the romantic dream of Columbus, 
grudged by nature 400 years, witli the promise and potenco of com- 
mercial revolution still unimagined and unima<;inable; yea, not merely 
an engineering, but a sanitary achievement oi unique distinction and 
unparalleled importance. 

And how shall such an event be celebrated — an event unique and 
transcendent, the like of which never was before and never can be 
again? By an exposition under auspices and direction of the United 
States of America, and representing the interests of all the people 
of our Union, an exposition to which the civilized world shall be 
invited, an exposition that shall not merely exhibit and illustrate the 
triumphs of commerce and industry, but shall set forth in still higher 
relief the things of the mind, the achievement of science, the crea- 
tions of literature and art, the progress of humanit}^ in the nobler 
and immaterial elements of life. 

Ten great vessels sail weekly from New Orleans to Latin America, 
instead of the three small vessels with weekly sailings 10 years ago. 

Some skeptic from beyond the Sierras may seek to minimize the 
foregoing considerations, may scoff at New Orleans as only the 
future great, and may discount her present hopes by pointing to 
her past disappointments. But the student or economic history 
will rather wonder that the Crescent City has maintained iier pace 
and her rank so well under conditions more adverse than ever enibar- 
rassed any other American city. For more than a hundred years 
New Orleans has faced heroically the direst disasters that nature 
could array against her. Fever and flood and sword have leagued 
themselves for her destruction. The menace of the Mississippi has 
been always before lier, the scourge of the Tropics has decimated her 
population, and her streets have been the theater of wars between 
all nations, but most of all the long agony of reconstruction con- 
vulsed her and left her for dead, insomuch that some said "she is 
dead." While her rivals ran on rejoicing in their strength, she 
herself was battling for life, smitten of God and afflicted. But even 
when overwhelmed by the most appalling calamities New Orleans 
has never for a moment lost heart or wavered in faith in her final 
destiny. 

In the foil clutch of circuinstanco 

She has not winced or cried aloud; 
Under the bludgeouings of chance, 

Her head is bloody, but unbowed. 

AVhat other city has known in equal degree the contrast of joy 
and sorrow, of riches and poverty, of victory and defeat ? 

There was a time — it was a quarter of a century before San Fran- 
cisco had become even a trading post — when New Orleans was 
fighting for the control of the great and growing commerce of the 



46 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

Mississippi Valley. It was then that JeiTerson made the prediction 
that New Orleans would one day become the largest city of the 
Union, the greatest emporium of the world. Then came the Erie 
Canal, and with it the marvelous rise of New York and the relative 
decline of Philadelphia and Charleston. But New Orleans, with her 
thousands of steamboats plowing the waters of the Mississippi and 
her tributaries and bringing the products of the valley States to her 
spacious harbor, continued to grow in wealth and power. She would 
have maintained her relative importance, and would have kept close 
on the heels of New York — ^yea, would have actually overtaken her — 
but for three things: 

1. The building of railways, and especially of the great continental 
lines, by the help of national subsidies of land. To realize what this 
means we have only to remember that our Government has granted 
to the Union Pacific and other transcontinental lines, in land sub- 
sidies, a domain vaster than the 13 original States, a domain having 
now a money value of thousands of millions of dollars. It was the 
building of these transcontinental lines that brought about not only 
the premature and fictitious development of the far West, but 
sealed for generations to come the destiny of New York as the 
metropolis of the western world. 

2. The failure on the part of our Government either to promote 
the building of railways from North to South or to maintain and 
develop inland waterways cut from New Orleans the hope even of 
remaining the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley. And yet she 
continues to make a gallant fight, continued to improve her harbor, 
to build steamboats, to clear the channel of the Mississippi and its 
tributaries, and had even begun to build railroads at her own expense. 

3. Then it was that an overwhelming disaster overtook her, sank 
her people into abject and hopeless poverty, and cut down, suddenly 
and apparently irretrievably, the proud hope and ambition of a hun- 
dred years — I mean the Civil War and the still more direful disaster 
of reconstruction. Added to the universal horror of the situation, 
her people and the people of lower Louisiana were compelled, unaided 
by the National Government, to continue the fight against fever and 
flood. Where in the history of this or of any other country can 
there be found a people of stouter fortitude, of sterner devotion to 
duty, of nobler faith in themselves and in the destiny of their city ? 
Like Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris, London, New Orleans is inter- 
esting because it has a great and thrilling history. 

Now, at length, New Orleans beholds the dawning of a better day. 
All her ancient enemies are vanquished finally and forever. She has 
fought to a finish and to splendid victory one of the greatest battles of 
civilization, the battle against yellow fever, and in so doing has made 
civilization in the Tropics not a possibility but an assured fact, and 
all the world her debtor. Aided by the State of Louisiana, and in 
recent years by the National Government, she has tamed the river's 
tide and now sits serene behind her impregnable levees. Peace and 
^ood will walk her streets together, and the joy of life blooms richer 
in her homes than elsewhere on this continent. 

New Orleans can not, indeed, like San Francisco, boast of 1,237 
hotels and apartment houses expectant of occupancy in 1915. She has 
not made such ample provision so far in advance for countless throngs 
of visitors. Nor does she consider one caravansary to every 300 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1015. 47 

inhabitants a laudable ratio. It may still be well to have an occa- 
sional home and not quite to abolish the I'esidence district. But in 
the matter of entertaining crowds, New Orleans has little to learn 
even from the largest cities. 

But granted that the coalescence of East and West is yet a desid- 
eratum, granted that the exposition should be held at the place where 
''these two great forces in the world's history must be assimilated to 
each other," one may make bold to assert that San Francisco would 
be the worst place on the whole earth to attempt such an assimilation. 
For nowhere else have these two forces met in such sharp and irrec- 
oncilable opposition. For years, almost from its beginning as a 
city, San Francisco — so at least the celestials think — has oppressed 
and outraged the Chinese. Wliat indignity has she not heaped upon 
the patient followers of Confucius, even to the shame of cutting off 
their pigtails! Is it any wonder that the Chinese have sought pro- 
tection in the Supreme Court of the United States ? 

Only a few years ago the conflict with the Japanese at San Francisco 
became so serious that sober-minded men throughout the nation began 
to fear grave international complications. And who does not know 
that the argument of Hobson and others for a big navy has been based 
almost wholly upon the belief that California and San Francisco are 
liable at almost any time to involve the nation in war with Japan? 
Upon battleships designed mainl}^ for the protection of San Francisco 
and the Pacific slope against invading celestials this Government has 
already spent scores of millions and millions more are still called for. 

Indeed, if the exposition were located at San Francisco we could 
scarcely avoid conflict with Japan. The recent incident at Pasadena 
would be followed by others far more serious and complicated. San 
Francisco might finance the exposition, but who would meet Hobson's 
call for more battleships ? There is not, nor ever was, gold enough in 
the mines of California to build battleships sufficient to protect against 
these orientals should the war spirit in them continue to be fostered 
and fomented. Far better for us, heeding the Monroe doctrine and 
avoiding dangerous complications wdth either Japan or China, to 
develop trade relations with Cuba, Mexico, Central and South America. 
This is what an exposition at New Orleans would do. 

President Wheeler represents the western coast as "a mere hem 
of the continent separated by 1,200 miles of barrens," as, indeed, 
"a sort of backyard to the Nation" that needs the canal to unite it 
\\dth the rest of the country. At this point, the great advocate 
mi^ht be left to make his peace with his own clients. But is it pos- 
sible that California has not yet been united to the Nation ? To what 
purpose then has our Government granted in land subsidies to the 
Union Pacific and other transcontinental lines a domain vaster than 
the combined areas of all the States on the Pacific coast? Nor is 
this all. It is these same continental railways that have made 
California prematurely the land of the multimillionaires. Truly a 
great and noble State, a realm of romance, inhabited by a people 
as bold and heroic and resourceful as may be found anywhere m the 
world. San Francisco is a beautiful and magnificent city, of which 
not Californians alone, but the citizens of the whole Republic, may 
be proud. The Nation, however, has long since discharged its full 
duty most generously in riveting the far West into union and sym- 
pathy with the older civilization of the Mississippi Valley. 



48 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

^Vliat, on the other hand, has our Government ever done to bring 
Louisiana and the Gulf States, the neglected part of the Union — I 
dare not use the preempted phrase, "the backyard of the Nation" — 
into closer toucli with the rest of the Kepublic ? How much has the 
Government given in money or in grants of land to promote the 
building of railways from North to South, from the Great Lakes to 
the Gulf? Wliat is the Government now doing to develop our in- 
land waterways, a work that should have been accomplished half a 
century ago? Must we await another 50 years? Should the great 
transcontinental railways win another fight and make San Francisco 
the site of the Panama Exposition, it would mean the temporary, 
though not the permanent, defeat, not of New Orleans alone, but of 
the whole South and the great Mississippi Valley; of all the region 
between the crest of the Sierras and the Allegheny Mountains. 

Gentlemen, in 1915 it will be just 50 years after the Civil War, 50 
years after Appomattox. Wlien that time comes citizens from 
Massachusetts, Irom California, from Maine and New Hampshire, 
from Florida and Virginia, will gather at some point, and, forgetting 
forever, I trust, the bitter memories of the past, will remember that 
we are all citizens of one common country, living under one glorious 
flag, a flag that floats over not only the vastest arid the richest, but 
the grandest and noblest Republic of the world. [Applause.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. TULIO LARRmAGA, A DELEGATE IN 
CONGRESS FROM THE ISLAND OF PORTO RICO. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. Mr. Chairman, I will now introduce as the next 
speaker Mr. Larrinaga, Delegate from Porto Rico. 

]\ir. Laerinaga. IMr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, 
it is with some diffidence that I come to take part in this matter. I 
never intended to, but of late I have heard from some of my people, 
and I thought it was my duty to present some of their views to this 
conunittee on the question of the celebration of the opening of that 
great work, the Panama Canal. I wiU not, of course, dweU upon the 
merits of New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, or any 
other city in the United States as the place at which to hold the cele- 
bration. Outside of the localities interested in this kind of affairs, 
there is no matter of sentiment at all. The great majority of the 
people who are to patronize the expositions are outsiders, so to speak. 
It is a simple matter of convenience. We will go wherever it would 
be better, easier, and less expensive to us, and this is the way hu- 
manity always moves. So that, as I said before, I am going to speak 
of the matter only as we view it, from a general point of view, with- 
out any regard as to whether San Francisco ought to have it or New 
Orleans ought to have it. 

In the matter of an exposition, I understand, ^Ir. Chairman, that 
the whole desideratum is success; and success, to my understanding, 
is succeeding in getting the people to go there. That is the whole 
tiling in an exposition, for the people to take their exhibits there and 
go and visit the place. In this we all have had plenty of experience. 
Everybody knows that outside of the Paris exposition almost every 
other world exposition has been more or less a failure. Even London 
has given up holding such affairs as not being paying propositions. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 49 

It is easy to understand where the success of PSris comes from. It is 
not only a hxrge city capable of accommodating everybody, and 
offering large inducements to science, art, literature, industry, and 
even pleasure, but because it has the main condition for these gather- 
ings, that it is the center of gravity, so to speak, of the whole civilized 
world. You can approach it from every point on earth, from the 
north, east, south, or west, by rail or by steamer. Therefore I 
believe that the main point with the gentlemen here is, Wliere would 
the exposition appeal more to us, the outsiders, and the rest of the 
world ? Where will it be easiest for us to come ? A correct answer to 
those questions will insure the success of it. No matter how much 
trouble, how much pain, how much money you spend, if it is not in 
our interest to go there you will not make it a success, and the money 
and trouble and ])ain will be lost. 

In this particular case the main idea of visitors will be the visiting 
of that great undertaking, the rendering asunder of the two American 
Continents, the North and the South, for after the cutting of the Suez 
Canal, this is the greatest enterprise of that kind ever undertaken; 
and even a greater one than that were it not for the fact that that was 
the first one and gave the example. So that our minds are mainly 
struck with the idea of coming to visit the works of the canal. So, 
if we fijid in our way an exposition, w^e will go there. Expositions 
for people in general are mamly not a business proposition, but they 
are advertising opportunities for exliibitors, and, besides, an oppor- 
tunity to visit a city or a country. I believe that if Cuba belonged 
to the United States the city of Habana would be the proper place 
for the exposition. If San Francisco were at the entrance to the 
canal, if Colon were San Francisco, a great progressive people, a 
beautiful city, there would be no discussion about it. But we, 
from the outside, and mamly we from the West Indies, in whose 
name I may be allowed to speak, will all flock to the Gulf of Mexico 
to see the works, and after visiting the works not many will be inclined 
to spend much more time and much more money to see some interest- 
ing part of the United States or take there our exhibits. Humanity 
moves, gentlemen, by the same laws of nature. It has ever been a 
sorry reflection to make, but it moves almost by the same laws of 
matter. Individuals may go by sentiment, but humanity as a 
whole will move by the laws of nature. So that we must in every 
act in our life, particularly in questions of this nature, study those 
laws.. If we follow them, w^e should move as humanity moves, as 
nature moves, toward the line of least resistance. If we follow 
them, we may succeed; if we oppose them, the chances are that we 
will fail. Therefore, my humble opinion, at least for us, the people 
in whose name I speak, is that the exposition should be held some- 
where near the Panama Canal works that we are going to celebrate. 
And, furthermore, I believe that this is not, to my understanding, any 
local question, any local issue. No matter what may be said, it is a 
national issue; it is of national importance. The glory of this great 
highway being opened to the commerce of the whole world will 
undoubtedly go to this great, glorious Nation of the United States, 
and you can not change that. [Applause.] 

73172—11—4 



50 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

STATEMENT Of'hON. JOHN ALLEN, OF TUPELO, MISS. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. It is my i)leasiire to introduce, as the next speaker, 
Private John Allen, of IMississippi. [Great a])plaiise.] 

The CiiAiKiviAN. Tlie gentleman from the prosperous and teeming 
metropolis of Tupelo needs no introduction to this committee. 

Mr. Allen. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am 
quite recently drafted into this business, and consequentl}'' I am quite 
sure I will be able to get through within the hmit of my time. Of 
course, I feel a great interest in the exposition and it being held at 
New Orleans. Now, you take a man who has traveled as I have; I 
always wanted to go to San Francisco, but it is so far, and there is 
such a long desert country we have to go through to get there, that I 
have never been there yet [laughter]; and, consequently, I know 
there are a great many more timid })eoj)le, more traveled than I am, 
who would ne^ er undertake it. I listened to Dr. Craighead's remarks, 
and he mentioned the nearness of New Orleans to the Panama Canal, 
which is a great consideration. He neglected to mention that New 
Orleans is within less than 500 miles of Tupelo [laughter], another 
thing that ought to be ver}' persuasive. 

I think, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, one great reason I have for 
desiring that this exposition go to New Orleans is that it would be 
accessible to so many more people, so many more jieople would attend 
it, and of course if it is to be of any benelit to the people who attend it, 
the better it will be. New Orleans is nearer to our Central and South 
American neighbors, and I think it is a matter of great importance to 
the United States tliat we build up connnerce with those countries. 
Another thing is, the South will, m my judgment — and I risk my 
reputation as a prophet on that — show more development in the next 
live years than anv part of the United States, and I am anxious that 
the people from all over this country may pass tlu-ough it and see its 
wonder! ul development. 

I have nothing in the world to say against the city of San Fran- 
cisco. As I say, I do not know it well h'om personal experience. I 
see my friend, All'. Kahn, over here, and I will ask him the question 
that Senator Jones said was asked him when he was in England. He 
said a large, side-whiskered, full-fronted Englishman [laughter] came 
up to him on one occasion and said: "Mr. Jones, I desire to alisk 
you a question. My company put £100,000 in an enterprise in San 
Francisco. We could lieali nothing from it, we could ^et no returns, 
so thej'^ sent me over to see about it. I went over and I could learn 
no more when I got there than when I was over here. So I went to 
the treasurer and I asked him to show me the vouchers. He said, 

'You damned, ornery, side-wliiskered English of a , get out 

of my office.'" [Great laughter.] Then he said, "Now, Senator, 
was that regular?" [Laughter.] I do not know from this whether 
the foreigner gets regular treatment in San Francisco or not. [Re- 
newed laughter.] 

Mr. Kahn. It must have been a New Orleans promoter who started 
that company in San Francisco. 

Mr. Allen. There is but one serious objection that can be urged 
against New Orleans from my standpoint. I have been a frequent 
visitor there in my life. The warm-hearted hospitality and generous 
treatment that every stranger who goes there receives makes it diffi- 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 51 

cult for liiiu to i;ot hack home as early as lie should. [Laughter.] I 
have had some little experience of that kind myself. 1 remember 
having gone home from there on one occasion— I went too directly 
home; 1 should have stopped on the way and rested a day or two 
somewhere. But Mrs. Allen has never been anxious to see me go to 
Kew Orleans since. [Laughter.] 

1 really think, though, the greatest consicknation about the whole 
business is its accessibility to the much larger ])ortion of the American 
peoj)le, its nearness to the canal, and, of course, while our personal 
prelerences are not to govern, ])robably, 1 do think it would be of 
more hiterest, would be better })atronized, and more educational to 
the ])eo])le of the United States in New Orleans than in San Francisco. 
[Applause.] 

STATEMENT OF MR. S. LOCKE BREATJX, OF NEW ORLEANS, LA. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. Mr. Chairman, the next sjieaker willbeMr. S.Locke 
Breaux, a merchant of New Orleans. 

Mr. Breaux. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of tiie committee, the 
presentment that has been made to you on this question has been so 
exhaustive it really seems as though there is nothing else for any- 
body to say. For all of that, it occurs to me that there are one or 
two subjects that should be amplified and added to, so as to lend 
emphasis to them. The first that occurs to me is that of finance. 
The State of Louisiana, under constitutional amendment, voted a 
tax that will raise a fund of six million and a Jialf of dollars. That 
provides for the ])ayment of the interest and a sinking fund and a 
retirement of the bonds. We have the assurance of oui' financial 
interests, which will be submitted to this committee in writing, that 
the bonds will be taken up at ])ar when they are ofTered for sale. In 
addition to that, ])rivate subscrii)tions, through the Panama Expo- 
sition Co., capitalized at .|10,()0(),()0(), have been i-aised to the extent 
of $1,700,000, so that we iiave a fund, cash, of over eight millions in 
hand, and giving us the exposition, there is no question at all that 
that will be raised to ten millions. Those of us who are interested 
in this exposition feel that with that amount of money we can do 
New Orleans and Louisiana. proud, and that we can do these United 
States i)roud in the national exhibits, and in the world exhibits that 
will be at New Orleans in 1915. 

Another (juestion of finance is the cost to those who will attend the 
exposition. Li that connection, as the celebration is to commemo- 
rate the o])ening of the Panama Canal, it is more than a fair assump- 
tion tluit those who come to New Orleans, or who come to attend an 
exposition of that character, will also want to go to Panama. So 
that in figuring the question of cost the major ])ortion of that expense 
for those who attend has to be taken into consideration. In order 
to have it of record, as it is a matter of figures, I would ask that these 
be filed in the record after I have talked of them. 

It occurred to me, in thinking the matter over, that the Repre- 
sentatives from Massachusetts, for instance, would be mterested in 
knowing what it would cost the people of that State to make the trip 
to and from New Orleans as against the possibility of making the trip 
to San Francisco; and taking Boston as the central point, we find 
that the distance to New Orleans is 1,576 miles, the approximate 



52 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

time to get there is 46 hours, or 2 days, and the raihoad fare is $37.80. 
From Boston to San Francisco is 3,375 miles; the approximate time 
is 101 hours, or 4^ days; the railroad fare is $84.40, and the difference 
in railroad fare, going one way, under the present rates that maintain, 
first-class fare, by the standard routes, would be $46.60. Multiply 
that by 2 and it gives you $93.20. I have not figured in this the 
Pullman fare or the meals en route, for the reason that we could not 
ascertain the Pullman fare exactly; but it is a fair assumption that 
those fares figure $5 a day. That is what we usually pay when we 
travel in a Pullman, just as it costs a man $3 a day to live on cars. 
One can hardly get meals for less than an average of a dollar apiece. 
So that it is easy to see from these figures the margin that a man 
would have in the lesser trip, not only of time, but of money, would 
enable him to go to New Orleans and remain there his 8 or 10 days, 
and come back, and not spend any more money than the actual rail- 
road fare and cost of carriage, meals and berths included, would cost 
him to go to San Francisco. 

If he had it in mind, however, to go to Panama, this dift'erence 
would be even more marked. I have made out here a memorandum 
of a trip from Boston, Mass., to New Orleans, Panama, and return, 
which I would also ask the privilege of filing in the record. That 
figures as follows: The present railroad fare to and from Boston and 
New Orleans is $75.60; sleeper, four days — that is, coming and go- 
ing — $5, is $20; meals en route, four days at $3, $12. Round trip to 
Panama, six days, meals and berths included, $75. In giving that 
rate, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I am giving the rate as it is to- 
day. But the United Fruit Co., which runs the line of steamers 
down there, have indicated that when the time comes they will put 
on a $40 rate, and they will have steamers making the trip in six days 
instead of as at present, eight days. So that makes a total, to go 
from Boston to Panama via New Orleans and return, of $182.60, 
including all expenses — meals en route, and everything of that kind. 
In figuring the trip from Boston to San Francisco and return, we 
would not figure Panama at all, because, of course, that is an imprac- 
tical proposition; nobody will want to go to San Francisco to get to 
Panama when, as it is to-day, the present trip down there takes from 
21 to 23 days, and the fare is $125 each way. But simply to go to 
San Francisco, as against the Panama trip, through New Orleans, 
taking in the expense in going to Panama, seeing the canal, seeing 
that foreign country, and coming back and getting home would be as 
follows: The present railroad fare to and from San Francisco and 
Boston, coming and going, is $168.80; sleepers, eight and one-half 
days at $5, cost $42.50; meals en route, eight and one-half davs at 
$3, $25.50, or a total of $236.80. The difference in cost of the round 
trip is $54.20. To that $54.20 should be added the $35 that the rate 
will be less than it is to-day. So that on that trip, taking the State 
of Massachusetts as an illustration, there would be a matter of $89.20 
in favor of a man making that trip, spending four or five days in New 
Orleans, spending four or five days on the Isthmus, coming back and 
going home, and that $89.20 more which it would cost him just to go 
to and from Boston to vSan Francisco w^ould give him money enough 
to spend to have a very good time, because a man can travel, paying 
his boarding expenses and his eating, as we have it in our city, on a 
basis of $4 or $5 a da}^ 



i 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL. EXPOSITION, 1915. 53 

In considering this illustration, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, of 
course, when the time of the exposition comes the standard rates 
that I have quoted will be lessened. But I take it that if they are 
lessened in one direction the same lessening would apply in the 
other. For instance, from Boston to New Orleans is 1,576 miles. 
Presumably we Jiave an S18 rate. To San Francisco it is 3,375 miles. 
In that event you would probably have a $38 rate or a S28 rate. It 
would, in any event, be more money. Irrespective of that differ- 
ence, however, the difference of traveling in one direction two days 
and in another four and a quarter days, going one direction, and 
doubling that going in two directions, means you could not eliminate 
the problem of eating eight and one-half days, as against having to 
feed yourself only four days. So that that element of expense would 
lot be lessened, because it is not of the human probabilities that 
oodstuffs and matters of tliat sort Avill be less four or five 3'^ears 
hence than they are to-day. 

In getting up these illustrations it also occurred to me that the 
Congressmen from New York would be interested in the situation, 
so I took Albany as an illustration, and we find that Albany is 1,455 
miles from New Orleans. It is a 40-hour trip if you go through the 
Cincinnati gatewav instead of coming via New York. That means 
a day and three-quarters at a rate of $36.25. The same trip to San 
Francisco — that is, fi-om Albany to San Francisco — is 3,170 miles, 
93 hours, equivalent to four days, approximately, $79.85, or a differ- 
ence in our favor of $43.60, again not including the incidental ex- 
penses of the trip. When you come to New York City you have 
relatively the same differential, except that to New Orleans it is 
1,344 miles, to San Francisco 3,278 miles, and your difference in 
our favor there is $46.60. 

The same interests, I opine, would apply to the Congressmen from 
Maryland, whose constituents and whose people would like to attend 
a world's fair of that kind. From Baltimore to New Orleans is 1,158 
miles; to San Francisco it is 3,168 miles. The difference there is 
$46.50 in our favor. 

Taking the Middle West, of whicli Chicago is a fairly representa- 
tive point out of Illinois, you have New Orleans 923 miles distant; 
you have San Francisco 2,371 miles distant. In that trip we get to 
New Orleans from Chicago in 25 hours, a day's travel; t.o San Fran- 
cisco in 71 hours, three days' travel. The difference in money in 
the railroad fare alone one wa}' is $36.75. 

Take Missouri, for instance.' From St. Louis, which I have taken 
as an important point 

Mr. Murphy. Rolla is the most important point. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Breaux. We took St. Louis because it was nearer Rolla. 
That is the onlv reason we selected it. From St. Louis to New 
Orleans is 706 niiles onl3^ We are almost first cousins down there. 
It is a mightv easy trip to make — only 22 hours, but we call that a 
day— and the fare at present is $18. But if you want to go to San 
Francisco fi-om St. Louis it is 2,295 miles, a 72-hour trip, and it costs 
$57, making a difference of $39 in favor of New Orleans on the trip, 
one wav. 

There is a State called Indiana, and it is a fair ])rcsumption that 
the Indianians may want to come to New Orleans, or go to the 
world's fair, and we are taking Indianapolis as a center. It is 864 



54 PKOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

miles to New Orleans, a 28-liour trip. And, again, that means only 
a day, so far as sleeping cars, food, and all that sort of thing is con- 
cerned. The rate is $21.15. To San Francisco it is 2,505 miles, a 
90-hour trip, nearly 4 days, $62.50 fare, a difference in our favor of 
$41.35 one way. 

We take next Louisville, Ky. Kentucky is also a State that I 
know is goii^g to be interested in the exposition, and I have personal 
affiliations in Louisville, and so I know her sentiments pretty well 
on that. New Orleans is 745 miles, a 23-hour trip, from Louisville. 
The fare is $19. San Francisco is 2,569 miles, an 80-hour trip, a 
little over 3 days, fare $62.50, $43.50 again in our favor on the trip 
one way. 

Take Wisconsin, which is a State, I take it, that will be interested. 
I know a great many of her people have come down into southwest 
Louisiana into our rice country and have become part and parcel of 
us. So that if New Orleans gets the exposition she can count on 
good delegations out of Wisconsin. Madison is 1,015 miles from 
New Orleans, the trip is a 30-hour trip, a little over a day, and the 
cost is $25.40. San Francisco is 2,346 miles, which means a 75-hour 
trip, practically 3 days; railroad fare $59.75, $34.35 in our favor. 

Then there is another State that I know will be interested, and 
that is Iowa. I assume that in these rates, Mr. Chairman and gen- 
tlemen, they will do as they always do when they give excursions — 
give blanket rates out of a certain territory;. A great deal of the 
travel is going to be on excursions. Des Moines is 1,047 miles from 
New Orleans, and from San Francisco it is 2,030 miles. The trip one 
way is 31 hours; the trip the other way is 60 hours. The difference 
in money in our favor is $28 one way; two ways it would be $56. 

Then we have Minnesota. Taking St. Paul as the central point, 
or a point upon which fares will be based, that city is 1,325 miles 
from New Orleans, and from San Francisco it is 2,255 miles. , It is a 
38-hour trip to come to New Orleans; it is a 66-hour trip to go to San 
Francisco. The rate one way is $29.50 to New Orleans; to San 
Francisco it is $56.75, a difference there in our favor of $27.25. 

Now we come to Alabama. Alabama is more than first cousin to 
New Orleans, of course. Taking Lafayette as a point, New Orleans 
is only 404 miles. A man there does not have to spend anything for 
meals, because it is only a 13-hour trip. He can take a sleeper, sleep 
all night, and pay for breakfast the next morning. The rate of fare 
is only $12. But when he goes to San Francisco he has to travel 
2,698 miles, which means 110 hours, or four and a half days of feed- 
ing and sleeper, and this would cost him $62.40 of railroad fare 
besides. So there he would be advantaged on that trip both ways 
$100.40, and that would be more money than he would need to stay 
in New Orleans ten days and have a good time, not to mention the 
trip to Panama. 

Vicksburg, Miss., is another point we feel very close kin to, but 
so far as the Mississippians are concerned, I do not think I need read 
this data, because Gov. Noel and Mr. Williams and others are going 
to say a word for their own State. 

In my elaboration of this detail of the Panama trip, Mr. Chairman 
and gentlemen, which I consider again, I reiterate it is a very impor- 
tant feature of the consideration of this question; I have made a 
memorandum here figuring the cost of the trip from Albany, N. Y.^ 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 55 

to New Orleans, and New Orleans to Panama and return, and, without 
reading the detail of it, including every expense it would cost you 
$175.50 to make the trip; from Albany to San Francisco and return, 
leaving out Panama, $223.70. That is on the present basis of steam- 
ship fare; so that a man from New York and kindred territory, who 
wanted to come to New Orleans and go to Panama, would find that it 
would cost him $48.20 less money, and with that low rate that I feel 
confident we are going to get from the steamship companies it will 
mean $35 more added to that. I have made this same memorandum 
applicable to Wisconsin, taking that as typical of the western country, 
and that also shows a total saving of $60.50. 

I have prepared this data, Mr. Chairman, so that it may be in the 
record, and 1 believe that New Orleans should be the place at which 
the exposition should be held, not because it is a case of "We want 
it because we want it," but we want it because we think we are 
entitled to it. The showing made, of course, is only for you to pass 
upon in your good judgment, but from my point of view I do not see 
how anybody can make a study of the c{uestion and not feel that 
New Orleans is the logical point. I thank you. [Applause.] 

Mr. Murphy. I would like to ask the gentleman one question. 
You have not prepared the figures from Seattle, Wash.; Denver, 
Colo.; Portland, Oreg. ; and Butte, Mont., have you? 

Mr. Breaux. I did not work those figures for this reason : That, of 
course, if there is an exposition at San Francisco, the people from that 
territory will go down there, and the chances are they will not want 
to go to Panama at all, so I left those out for that reason. If they do 
want to go to Panama, it is certain they will come over the Southern 
Pacific and go through New Orleans, which is the proper way to get 
there. [Applause.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. EDMOND F. NOEI, GOVERNOR OF THE 
STATE OF MISSISSIPPI. 

Gov. Noel. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, it has 
been my purpose to speak to you briefly of the Mississippi Valley 
people's interest in this exposition apart from those of New Orleans 
and of Louisiana. The figures that have just been given to you by 
Mr. Breaux make that speech for itself. His statement shows 
clearly and conclusively, and if those figures are borne in mind, so 
conclusively that there is no manner of argument or eloquence can 
shift the true issue, which is, if the Federal Government is to give 
its approval and sanction to this great exposition as a commemora- 
tion of two matters, one the place, Panama, and the other the time, 
1915, the opening of the exposition, it should give it in a way to be 
beneficial to all of the people, especially to the vast mass of people 
to whom a day's time and $10 or $20 in money may mean the going 
or staying away — and the argument is overwhelmingly and irresist- 
ibly in favor of New Orleans. 

Living in an adjoining State, we have in it a great interest, and 
every other State m the Mississippi Valley and every other State in 
the Union, the vast majority of its people, have an interest, as we 
have, proportioned to the time, cost, and convenience of going to 
New Orleans and of going to San Francisco. Those are the ques- 
tions. Are we to consider merely the question of the cost of build- 



56 PROPOSED PANAMA OANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

ings? Ten million dollars or fifteen million dollars will provide a 
display that will be wonderfully helpful and wonderfully instructive. 
Then, when we come to the cost, there is material and labor and 
others matters, of which I will not speak. But shall we consider, in 
deciding where the Government's approval shall go, how much, in 
exact dollars and cents, one place or the other can give ? Of course, 
that city can pay the most, that section can bid the most, which 
can most tax the people to go, to come, and to stay. If that be true, 
then the exposition shall go to that place which will bear the greatest- 
tax upon the average visitor. But that is not the question, not at 
all. We want this event, we want this display, to educate whom? 
The wealthy, who have time and money to go anywhere in Europe or 
America? No; you want it for the common people, for the poor 
people. The poorer and the more ignorant and narrow the man 
may be in his views, the more he may be benefited by an exposition 
of this character. 

As to the question of the United States Government paying for 
buildings — and that is all it is called on in any event to pay for, a 
building for its exhibit and for the operation of that building— this 
great country of ours should be ashamed to do anything less than 
that, regardless of what might be the wish, or what might be the 
bid, of any particular city or section. The Government is able to 
pay it. The Government owes to itself, to its people, to its poor, 
and to its wealthy that it shall pay for the installation and the 
presentation of its exhibit and for the cost of the education that it 
gives to the people of this whole country. In speaking for them, we 
say now, when we come to look at that, what is the true basis of the 
decision ? It is the educational value to the people of this country 
and the other countries, embracing South and Central America, 
whose particular interests lie with us and will be most promoted by 
the opening of this canal. Do we want to show them the distance 
across this country, from California to New York, or to the populated 
part of the United States; or the grand distance around and across 
the ocean? No. We want to remove from them the question of time, 
the few hours it would take to bring them here; the question of 
distance, a few hundred miles; the question of cost, only a few 
dollars, open to all. It is transportation of persons and property; 
it is a question of time, of cost, and of convenience, and when we 
consider these questions, there is but one, and it is the true basis of 
decision. When it comes to the Government acting for the whole 
people there is but one answer, one comparison of figures, where they 
show cost and time and convenience. 

As to the people of San Francisco, that they are a great people, 
that they are a wealthy people, that they are a hospitable people, we 
all concede to be true. That they are a great people, that the}^ are a 
people of vast resources, we all concede. If they want an exposition 
to celebrate any event that is not 3,000 miles away from them 
they have the right to have it. We might have little to say on that 
subject. But when they want this exposition, it is for this great 
portion of the people who live on the other side of the Rockies, and 
it is for the Orient, to whom they are more convenient, and whose 
advances they repel in every possible way. We read it in the morn- 
ing papers, we read it in any papers, and there is the power of the 
Government trying to overcome the hostility expressed by the legis- 



PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 57 

lative department of that State. They desire to repel; they do not 
desire to encourage. They desire to show those people not how near 
we are to them, to the orientals, but how far we are from them. We 
do not desire — at least it is not their desire — to encourage them. 
But, on the other hand, what about the South ? We want their busi- 
ness; we want their commerce; we want more kindly rel^ions. 

I have visited San Francisco. I was there about six years ago, 
just after the earthquake; went over there to a triennial conclave. 
I have seen New Orleans. I have seen how it could accommodate 
crowds. I have had personal experience with transportation, and 
I did not see anything in the way of accommodation for the people 
who went to the triennial conclave six years ago that could not have 
been provided in New Orleans. I had just as much difficulty in 
getting quarters in San Francisco on that occasion as I ever had on 
any occasion going to New Orleans. And then, when we crossed, a 
three days' journey, to San Francisco, some 200 people in one train, 
with one diner, it took two hours and a little over to get to a meal, 
and I took one meal a day rather than stand six hours in line in order 
to get something to eat. On one day it was even worse than that. 
After we left Ogden, somehow we missed the diner, and it was from 
night until 3 or 4 o'clock the next evening before even the children 
could get anything to eat that the families had not provided and 
carried with them. You can not diminish distance; you can not 
level mountains. But those things have to be accounted for in look- 
ing to visits of this sort. Many thousands and thousands of people 
in the United States had counted on going to Seattle, just like myself. 
I did not think there was any question but that I would go. But 
when the time came I did not see where I could give two or three 
weeks to go. It would have brought hundreds of thousands out 
but for the distance and the time they would have to be gone; and 
it is likewise with San Francisco. 

Now as to the East. My friend over there, Mr. Scott, lives in a 
city of equable climate summer and winter. They say it is all alike, 
except for the rain and the drought — a beautiful place, a beautiful 
city. But what of the heat ? You go from San Francisco down 
there and they shut down the transoms and the windows of the cars 
in order to keep out the blistering heat, 115 in the shade, and it cer- 
tainly felt it, the hottest I ever felt. [Laughter.] They have an 
ocean breeze to cool you off, and then a land breeze that just simply 
blisters you. I had some kinfolks in the city of San Francisco. 
Three families of them had gone out to Fresno right after the Civil 
War. Some of them had prospered there, and in the farming inter- 
ests they were among the largest in that section. I wanted to go 
down to see them. I was talking to a friend of mine, a lawyer, and 
he gave me the same information I had received before. He said: 
''You won't find one there. Nobody stays there who can get away." 
He said: "The heat is terrific. If you went to Fresno City you would 
never come. West again. I advise you to stay away." He said: 
"Actually, down there it is something like 120 in the shade, and they 
have never found paint that would hold on a house." 

That has been my personal experience. Just the hottest weather 
I ever felt on earth was in California; the hottest places I ever felt in 
America — I did not know there were any so hot. I do not mean to 
slander San Francisco or Pasadena. But it is the getting there. You 



58 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

have to go over'alkali plains, over mountains, through sheds that keep 
off the snow in winter and then are kept in summer and keep the 
smoke and fumes in the cars, so that they have to keep the ventilators 
closed for 40 hours. That all means great inconvenience. We could 
go to any part of the United States easier, cheaper, than we can 
around there, and with less inconvenience, and there would be a 
greater number to go. 

We ask on behalf of Mississippi, I think, just as all the other States 
of the Mississippi Valley do, that those whose needs are greatest, 
those whose ability to go is least, those to whom a few dollars and a 
few days may mean an opportunity of a lifetime, or may mean their 
remaining in their secluded and their benighted condition — we ask 
that all who are poor, we ask that all the country people of this coun- 
try of limited means and of limited opportunity shall be afforded an 
opportunity at that place which is speaking for the exposition which 
wiu give to them the place of freest and cheapest and quickest oppor- 
tunity of visitiiig and of being benefited by it. [Applause.] , 

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN, SHARP WILLIAMS, SENATOR ELECT 
FROM THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI. 

Mr. EsTOPiNAL. I have the honor of introducing the Hon. John 
Sharp Williams, Senator elect from the State of Mississippi. [Great 
applause.] 

Mr. Williams. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, 
some great man once said — I have forgotten now who it was ; it may 
have been Sir Isaac Newton, it may have been Lord Bacon, or it may 
have been John Allen, of Mississippi, but it was some one — that if you 
could get a division along the lines of personal interest concerning the 
law of gravitation there would be two parties and two schools formed 
at once, and both would be equally in earnest, and some on either 
side would be willing to die as martyrs to the great cause, and that 
there never had been any party lines upon the subject of the law of 
gravitation simph^ because nobody had any interest in denjdng it. 

Mr. Chairman, when I look around me and see my friend Kalm with 
that pleasant and somewhat unreal face, and my friend Theodore 
Bell, who is taking this thing seiiously, I am astonished, I am as- 
tounded at the audacity of human efforts. [Laughter.] Some things 
are so easy, so ludicrously easy, that they become pathetically diffi- 
cult, and that strikes me on this occasion. It seems to be so easy to 
demonstrate that New Orleans is the right place and that San Fran- 
cisco is almost an imthinkable place, except for the magnificent man- 
hood and womanhood that happens to inhabit it, that it is hard to 
argue. Anybody knows that two and two make four, but if you ever 
find anybody wlio docs not know it, it is awfully hard to get upon a 
plane of mutual understanding. [Laughter.] You may think it is 
something as easy as falling off a log, and yet I have never known 
anybodv who could fall either gracefully or easily oft' a log. 

i have heard but one good argument for San Francisco, and that 
was that it is a wonderfully situated city. It is. You would think, 
first blush, you could take any place upon the surface of the eartirand 
go to an}^ other place from it in one direction by not going over half 
the circumference of the earth. But you can not get to San Francisco 
from anywhere, hardly, in the civilized world, without going over 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 59 

half of tho circumference of the earth. [Laughter.] If you were to 
have any exhibits from Europe, they would have to come over 12,500 
miles to roach San Francisco. If you are going to|have any exhibits 
from South America and Central America, while I am not good at 
figures, the distances are simply immense. They are a little bit over 
half the circumference of the earth, too, except right on the Pacific 
coast, in old California down, and in that direction. 

Then I have heard it said, when San Francisco first dawned upon 
you it was a picture of beauty. That is true, and that is true of almost 
any place upon the Pacific slope. But the reason of it is that after 
you are through crossing those alkali plains, shut up in the cars, 
taking the heat when the windows are closed, and when they are open 
taking the alkali dust, when you will blister, any place will look 
almost as good as the Promised Land did to Moses after he had passed 
through the Wilderness. [Laughter.] I stayed in San FranciscoTa 
little while once, and I was astonished as I grew used to the place to 
see how much less beautiful it seemed to be than the first time I saw it. 
I happened to wake up there when it was the first thing I had seen 
that was green since I had entered the plains, 

Mr. Chairman, it is easy enough to talk over all these things you 
have been talked to death about, I suppose, already, but I do not 
want to take up your time inflicting figures upon you of one sort or 
another. But this one thing strikes me as a thing to be considered. 
I believe the center of the density of the population of the United 
States is a little place in southwestern Indiana. It is about 500 
miles from New Orleans and about 2,500 from San Francisco. If we 
are to go upon the idea that the center of the density of population 
furnishes you a good basis from w^hich to calculate and average the 
number of people who can attend the place, it will be five times easier 
for them to go to New Orleans than it will be to go to San Francisco, 
and if the fare to San Francisco were cut down to half a cent a mile 
for the round-trip ticket it would be more than the average American 
citizen could afford to pay. It would be about half, by the statistics, 
of what the average American earns in a year. 

Of course, I know that my friend Kahn does not care particularly 
about this. He is entering into it in pretty much the same spirit that 
he once made an eloquent speech in behalf of a bill of mine that I 
introduced and subsequentl}^ regretted. [Laughter.] He would do 
most anything to be good natured if liis folks wanted him to. But 
my friend Bell is in earnest, and thinks, or thinks he thinks, there is 
some reason why San Francisco should have it. [Laughter.] When 
it comes to the creature comforts — and they are not to be despised — 
there is no place in America ahead of New Orleans. New Orleans 
not only is the chief American city at mixing things and cooking 
things [laughter], but it is almost the only American city. And, by 
the way, my hoarseness now is largely attributable to the fact that I 
sat up late last night losing my voice trying to persuade men who had 
never come in contact with it not to participate too freely in the 
hospitality of New Orleans. [Great laughter.] 

Now, Mr. Chairman, so much for the people who attend the fair. 
Are you going to have any exhibits at the fair if it is held in San 
Francisco ? Methinks I heard yesterday evening or this morning 
that the San Franciscans were not asking the Government to appro- 
priate any money for an exhibit. Let us not be deceived by that. 



60 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Mr. Chairman. You and I remember when Buffalo got her exposi- 
tion, and we remember that there was to be nothing. But there was 
something later on, and there always will be, and of course the United 
States Government is going to pay for its exhibit. San Francisco is 
not going to pay for it, and, as I understand, that is about all New 
Orleans is asking for. [Applause.] I think it would be better to put 
it in the fore part of the bill and have done with it at the jump, instead 
of holding it back for some subsequent day, when the argument would 
be made that it was unworthy the prestige of this great Government 
to let San Francisco or California bear the expense of her exhibit, 
and for guarding those exhibits, and all that. If you are in earnest 
about that, it seems to me you do not want Congress at all. If you 
are just going to give this thing anyhow, the United States not to 
pay for its own exhibits, why not just go and give it by yourselves? 
[Laughter.] You might start an opposition exposition on your own 
hook out there. So much for the people attending. Let us see about 
the exhibits. Are any exhibits coming from Europe ? I have for- 
gotten the distance, but it is some 3,300 miles from London to New 
Orleans, and I believe it is some 15,000 miles from London to San 
Francisco, more or less. One of the funny things about San Fran- 
cisco's celebrated situation is that God has so configured the conti- 
nents that you can not go to San Francisco directly by water from 
anywhere under the sun. To land in San Francisco you have to go 
over halfway round the earth to get over what would be one-fourth 
around the earth as the bird would fly. The expense of getting the 
exhibits there is a thing, I take it, to be considered, and the disad- 
vantages of San Francisco with respect to European exhibits are 
palpable, plain, and obvious. As to the South American exhibits, 
except those that come from the Pacific coast — Chile, Peru — where 
they have a natural geographic advantage for San Francisco, the 
great majority will go from Atlantic coast or Central South American 
countries, where you will meet with precisely the same difficulties. 

When you come to the oriental exhibits, San Francisco has a nat- 
ural advantage. But that advantage is, I expect, more than coun- 
terbalanced by the unfriendly feelings, about which I am not criti- 
cizing California at all^ — I rather sympathize with it — but the un- 
friendly feeling between her people and the people of the Orient, a 
feeling that does not exist with regard to New Orleans. I feel, Mr, 
Chairman, as if I owed somewhat of an apology to you and the com- 
mittee for taking up even this much time by repeating, I take it, 
what you have heard before from nearly every man who has been 
upon his feet. But I have thought that I ought to show the inter- 
est that my people are taking in this matter. All down in the Mis- 
sissippi Valley they are veiy intensely interested in having this great 
exposition at New Orleans. Somebody said, I think it was Jim Hill, 
that if you would start a barrel from Chicago it would roll to New 
Orleans. The great Mississippi Valley is the artery of this country. 
The seat of future empire of the world will be that country situated 
between the Alleghemes and the Rockies, the great central valley. 
There w^ll be attached to it, incidentally, or accidentally, places 
that are more or less beautiful in consequence of contrast between 
them, places you have to pass through to get to them. But they 
will be mere incidents and accidents as long as time goes. I thank 
you, Mr. Chairman. [Applause.] 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 61 

The Chairman. The committee was in hopes we would be able to 
finish the hearing this morning:, but Mr. Broussard and Mr. Estopinal 
inform the chairman they still have several gentlemen to present 
to-morrow morning, and we will have another meeting. 

Mr. Kahn. Mr. Chairman, so many misstatements have been made 
to the committee that we of California would like to be given an op- 
portunity, after the hearings on the part of the supporters of this bill 
have been had, to refute some of those statements. 

The Chairman. Very well. 

Gov. Saunders. On behalf of the New Orleans delegation I desire 
to state that we have no objection at all to the gentlemen being 
heard, only reserving the right to close the discussion. 

The Chairman. That is the practice that prevails. 

Gov. Saunders. I would suggest to the chairman, therefore, that 
I do not think we have any speakers for to-morrow. 

The Chairman. Could you intimate about how much time you 
would like to have, Mr. Kahn ? 

Mr. Kahn. I think one forenoon would finish it absolutely, but 
we would like, and I think it would be only fair, to allow all of the 
men who are to speak in favor of this bill to first be heard, in order 
that we may then take all of the statements that have been made 
to which we take exception and answer them, and then if they 
desire to be heard in reply to our statements, of course they could 
go on again. That would be fair. 

Gov. Saunders. We have no more speakers, except in rebuttal. 

Mr. Kahn. I understood from the chairman of the committee that 
Mr. Broussard mentioned that several other speakers would be heard. 

The Chairman. So I understood fro;ii Mr. Broussard. That was 
the impression I gathered from what was said to me. 

Mr. Kahn. If there are not any more speakers, we are ready to 
proceed to-morrow morning. If there are any more, we would 
prefer to have them heard. 

The Chairman. Then be here promptly at 10 o'clock to-morrow 
morning. 

Mr. Estopinal. I understand that we will have an opportunity to 
be heard again, if we so desire ? 

The Chairman. To summarize and close; yes. 

Mr. Estopinal. I wish to file this telegram in the record as an 
answer to an inquiry that was made by one of the members of the 
committee on yesterday. I understand the inquiry was made by the 
gentleman from Missouri, and this is the reply : 

Indoi-sement from Licking, Mo., received from Clay County Grange No. 196. Signed 
John P. Morrison, secretary. 

(Thereupon, at 12.05 o'clock p. m., the committee adjourned until 
to-morrow, Friday, January 1.3, 1911, at 10 o'clock a. m.) 



62 proposed panama canal exposition, 1915. 

Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions, 

House of Representatives, 

January 13, 1911. 
The committee met at 10.30 a. m. 

The Chairman. The committee will be in order. We will now 
resume the hearings. 

Mr. Estopinal. I would like, gentlemen of the committee, to offer 
a statement, just before the opening of the gentlemen from California, 
from Mr. Broussard and from Gov. Saunders. It will take but a few 
minutes. 

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT F. BROUSSARD. 

Mr. Broussard. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I 
merely want to say to the committee that I understand that there will 
be introduced into the Senate to-day a proposition to amend whatever 
bill may come out of this committee and pass the House relative to 
the celebration contemplated by the proposition which has been pre- 
sented to this committee in regard to this celebration, by a naval dis- 
play to take place at Norfolk, Hampton Roads, to which aU the nations 
of the world are to be invited to participate. 

In so far as the Louisiana people who are here representing the New 
Orleans side of this proposition, and in so far as the delegation from 
Louisiana in Congress are concerned, I would hke to state that we 
should be very glad indeed if this committee sees fit to amend the bUl 
under consideration now by including such a celebration as will be 
suggested in the amendment that wiU be introduced into the Senate. 
We are thoroughly in accord with it and hope that this committee 
may see proper to amend the bill making New Orleans the point for 
the celebration of the Panama Canal by having such a proposition as 
will be outlined in the amendment introduced into the Senate to-day. 
That amendment includes not only the naval display, as I understand 
it, but a mihtary display in the capital here, and of course we are in 
accord with that proposition as well. 

That was the only purpose I had in view. I shall not deal with the 
merits of tliis controversy, but merely wanted to make this statement 
to the committee that we were perfectly satisfied if the committee 
saw fit to make such an amendment to the New Orleans bill. Thank 
you. 

STATEMENT OF GOV. SAUNDERS, OF LOUISIANA. 

Mr. Estopinal. Gov. Saunders would hke to make a statement. 

Gov. Saunders. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, 
on yesterday Mr. Kahn asked that any statement that might be made 
for Louisiana in this matter be made before they argued their case, 
which is perfectly just and proper. They ought to be in possession 
of a fuU knowledge of where we stand. 

On behalf of the company having in charge the celebration of this 
event in New Orleans, I desire to make this statement: Our position 
from the very beginning regarding governmental aid has been that 
we beheve it to be the duty of the Government to make such appro- 
priation for exliibit purposes as the Government itself may deem fit 
and proper. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 63 

We understand, however, that there is some objection to the 
Estopinal bill on the ground that it carries with it a million dollar 
appropriation for a governmental exliibit. If, in the wisdom of the 
committee and tliis Congress, it desires to strike that portion of the 
bill out, we will acquiesce in that with tliis distinct understanding, 
that we do not believe or in any way admit the principle that the 
Government should not pay for its own exliibit; nor do we in any 
way, shape, or form bind ourselves not to ask for the Government to 
make such an exliibit. We want, to make that statement, Mr. 
Chairman, in justice to ourselves and in justice to the committee, 
and in justice to our opponents who will now follow us. 

Our position has not changed, nor will it change in this matter, no 
matter what may be the action of the committee, whether it strikes 
out the appropriation of a million dollars or not . We tliink that this 
Government, wherever an exposition will be held, should bear the 
expense for its own exliibit. If it is held in San Francisco, we 
certainly will expect ever}' member of Congress from Louisiana to 
vote for a governmental exliibit thfere. 

The Chairman. Now, Mr. Kahn, I will ask you to take charge 
of the San Francisco side of this proposition and to designate the 
men who are to address this committee. 

Mr. Kahn. Before I do that, I want to make just one observation, 
if the committee please. I want to say that Mr. Bell, who will open 
for San Francisco will be here almost any moment. The statement 
of my colleague, Mr. Broussard, reminds me of what has been done 
by the cit}^ which he represents all the way along in this matter — 
tagging along after San Francisco's first acts. On yesterday I had 
the honor to introduce in the House of Representatives a resolution 
empowering the President to invite the nations of the world to send 
warships and rendezvous at Hampton Roads; thence to proceed 
to the Panama Canal and its opening, and from there to San Francisco. 
So, once again, New Orleans is tagging along behind San Francisco. 

A bill has already been introduced into the House of Represent- 
atives. I am not feeling in good health this morning. I have been 
under the doctor's care for some days, and I am not prepared to-day 
to make an argument before the committee, but I hope to be able to 
do so to-morrow. 

STATEMENT OF HENRY B. F. MACFARLAND, OF WASHINGTON, 

D. C. 

The Chairman. Mr. Macfarland, the committee will hear your 
statement now. This is Mr. Macfarland, formerly Commissioner of 
the District of Columbia. 

Mr. Macfarland. Mr, Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, 
I appear this morning as the chairman of a joint committee of the 
Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Trade of the City of Wash- 
ington — the two civic organizations representative of our citizenship. 
The Board of Trade did not act upon the proposition which I am to 
present until last night, wdiicli is the reason it has not been presented 
before ; but I am now in a position to present it in a preliminar}' way, 
and to ask for a further hearing. This is in the nature of a notice 
as to our proposition. The proposition which has been recommended 
by this joint committee and adopted by the two civic bodies, and 



O^ FEOrOSED I'AJNAMA (JAJNALi JiXFOHiTiON^ 19113. 

wliich has the indorsement of our citizenship, is that there should be 
in the city of Washington, the National Capital, the seat of the Gov- 
ernment of the United States, and the official residence of the ambas- 
sadors and ministers of the foreign governments, first, an ofRcial 
celebration of the opening of the Panama Canal, which is, of course, 
an entirel}" governmental affair; that to that celebration the foreign 
governments should be invited, and that our Government and the 
foreign governments should participate in a celebration which should 
be on a dignified and impressive scale. 

The Chairman. Have you outlined the character of the celebration 
that you desire ? 

Mr. Macfarland. I was just about to say that we have not done 
so in detail, but that we are prepared to do so, or shall be prepared 
to do so in a very short time, and we desire to offer the suggestion, 
together with the rest of our proposition at this time, and then to have 
the opportunity to present the matter in detail later. 

Now, the 'rest of the proposition is this: At the same time there 
should be opened here a governmental exposition of the history and 
resources of the United States. First, by the National Government, 
which could avail itself of the three new buildings; that for the 
Department of State, that for the Department of Justice, and that 
for the Department of Commerce and Labor, which are already 
provided for, the sites purchased and the plans authorized, to be 
erected on the eastern side of the White House park and to be com- 
pleted in 1915. In these buildings could be exhibited, for example, 
the great documents of our history which are in the Department of 
State and which would be in the new Department of State building, 
and a general exhibition of the history and resources of the United 
States, which, taken in connection with the great exhibit of our 
history and resources always here, and up to this time not fully seen 
by anyone, in the National Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the 
Library of Congress, and so on, which would constitute the National 
Government part of this exposition. Then invitations should be 
given by the National Government to the States to provide exhibits 
which should become permanent in a permanent building, on land to 
be set aside by the National Government for the purpose, preferably 
in the Potomac Park, near to the President's house and these depart- 
ments to which I have referred, where the States would have perma- 
nent exhibits of their resources and industries. 

Mr. Nelson. Is this to be a substitute for the pending bill, or 
supplementary to the exposition at New Orleans or San Francisco, 
whichever it may be ? 

Mr. Macfarland. We propose that that shall be considered as an 
independent proposition, although we have nothing but the kindest 
feeling for both New Orleans and San Francisco. We are not here 
to antagonize New Orleans or San Francisco, either one, but we 
believe that the opening of this governmental work should be cele- 
brated by ceremonies and governmental exhibits in the National 
Capital. If industrial expositions are to be held in New Orleans 
and San Francisco, we trust they may he highly successful; but we 
believe this is a governmental affair, that it is a celebration of the 
greatest governmental engineering achievement in the history of the 
world, and that it should be held here. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 65 

We have suggested — of course this is all subject to the approval 
of Congress, and to the approval of the Executive — we have sug- 
gested that the very opening of the canal might be made from this 
capital; that there being complete telegraphic connection with the 
Canal Zone, the President of the United States could press the button 
here wliicli would actually open the canal there. Afterwards, any 
ceremonies that are desired can take place at the Panama Canal, and 
afterwards an exposition can be held in San Francisco or Xew Orleans 
or both. In connection with the celebration here we suggest that 
the Army and Xavy shall participate in procession; that there may 
be an assembling of ships, national and international, at Hampton 
Roads, which, if desired, could proceed to the Panama Canal and 
proceed thence to New Orleans and San Francisco as vrell. We are 
presenting this as an independent proposition. We wish New 
Orleans and San Francisco well, but we are presenting this as an 
independent proposition for a governmental celebration, a govern- 
mental exposition by the National Government and by the State 
Governments, which exposition should remain permanently in the 
National Capital, and we should be very glad to have a further oppor- 
tunity at the pleasure of the committee to present the matter more 
in detail. 

Mr. CuLLOP. Do you think it is good business policy for the Govern- 
ment to have its exliibits divided into two or three different shows 
over the country ? 

Mr. Macfarlaxd. We hold that the governmental celebration and 
governmental exposition should be in the city of Washington. We 
assume that in any event the National Government ^would do no 
more for an industrial exposition at, for example, New Orleans or 
San Francisco, than it did at the industrial expositions at Chicago 
and St. Louis — that is to sa}', for a Government building and a 
Government exhibit; and that will be a very small affair compared 
to the great exhibit which will be had here. 

Mr. CuLLOP. In other words, a person who wanted to attend this 
exhibit would have to make a trip to three or four different places 
to see it ? 

Mr. Macfarland. No; it v.ould only be necessary to make a trip, 
as far as the governmental exhibit is concerned, to the city of Wash- 
ington. After that he could go to the industrial expositions else- 
where. 

And, moreover, sir, the exhibitions of the foreign governments 
would naturally go to the industrial expositions and not to the city 
of Washington. Here we have now a great exposition in the govern- 
mental departments and in the Library of Congress and in the 
National Museum; a great exposition which can never be seen any- 
where else. Nothing but small samples have been sent or could be 
sent to industrial expositions elsewhere. This is the seat of govern- 
ment; this is the permanent place of these gi'eat national exhibits, 
and aU that we ask is that the people shall be invited to come here 
with the opening of the new buildings to which I have referred, with 
a formal arrangement of the exhibits of history and resources, so 
that the whole people may see them; and then the industrial expo- 
sition, which is an entirely different matter, will attract them to San 
Francisco or New Orleans, or both. 
73172—11 5 



66 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

. Mr. CuLLOP. For instance, this is to be inaugurated for the pur- 
pose of showing the various resources and progress of the United 
States; and the citizen out in the interior of the country or near the 
center of population, which is nearly a thousand miles to the west, 
would have to travel east a thousand miles to see part of it, then if 
held at San Francisco he would have to travel back across the conti- 
nent and he would cross it to see the other part of the exposition; 
or if in New Orleans, then to the south. You don't think for a 
moment that an exposition of that kind could be made a success, 
do you ? 

Mr. Macfarland. I have no manner of doubt, sir, that the gov- 
ernmental exposition at the city of Washington would be a great 
success, nor do I doubt but that an exposition at San Francisco or 
New Orleans would be a success, or both places. The citizen in the 
heart of the country would have to travel to San Francisco or New 
Orleans, and as he goes home the journey to Washington is a matter 
of a few hours at the most. 

Moreover, citizens of the United States greatly desire to come to 
Washington, and would not, I think, consider it a hardship to make 
the extra trip. 

Mr. CuLLOP. You don't think that they or anybody attending an 
exposition should be required to attend two or three different cities, 
do you ? 

Mr. Macfarland. I am not proposing that, sir. The govern- 
mental exhibits will be here in any event. The Government could 
only send samples, as it has in the past, and it can send nothing else 
but small samples to these expositions. But here are exhibits now 
which the great majority of the people of the United States have 
never seen, which they ought to see, which, doubtless, they desire to 
see, and all that we suggest is that this shall be organized so that they 
niay have the opportunity in connection with the celebration of this 
great governmental event, which is not local, but national, and which 
should be celebrated in the National Capital, and the capital which is 
international in the sense that it is the seat of the official residence 
of the ambassadors and ministers and the place of communication 
with their governments. 

The Chairman. Of course, the expense of an exposition of that kind 
would have to be borne entirely by the Government, would it not ? 

Mr. Macfarland. The expense, in our view, would not be great. 
The buildings to which I refer for the Department of State, the 
Department of Justice, and the Department of Commerce and Labor, 
in which a special exhbit can be arranged, are to be constructed 
anyway. There would be no expense on that account. The invita- 
tion to the legislatures of the States for the construction of permanent 
State buildings here might well be made at any time, and would 
involve no expense to the National Government. The citizens of 
Washington are ready to bear whatever expense may be necessary 
for the incidental work of the organizing of this j^roposed govern- 
mental exposition. But it need not involve any considerable expense. 
We do not ask for any local appropriation. We put it entirely upon 
the national and the international plane, and regard it as a matter 
for the Government of the United States distinctively. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 67 

Mr. CuLLOP. Why not ask to have the entire exposition, indus- 
trial, as well as that you have spoken of, here at Washington ? Com- 
bine them all in one. 

Mr. Macfarland. That we do not desire, and we are entirely 
willing to have an industrial exposition at either New Orleans or 
San Francisco, or, as I say, at both. The purpose we have is purely 
national and governmental. The Government of the United States 
and the government of the States in connection with the official 
celebration wliich we think can most appropriately be held in the 
national capital. 

Mr. CuLLOP. One other question, please. Don't you think it 
would be more successful, or the success of it better assured, by 
having it all combined in one ? 

Mr. Macfarland. We have no doubt, sir, as I have said before, 
that there could be a success here in the National Government and 
State government exposition and a success in the industrial exposi- 
tion at either of the places named, or at both. 

Mr. CuLLOP. Don't jou believe it would be more successful to 
combine the three in one ? 

Mr. Macfarland. They can not be combined, sir. You can not 
take the seat of government to New Orleans or to San Francisco. 
You can not take the National Museum to New Orleans or San 
Francisco, and all you can possibly have is what was out at Cliicago, 
St. Louis — something of the same sort — and that could be done in 
any event. That exposition is permanent and ready to be sent to 
any exhibition that desires it. Here, sir, we have exliibits that can 
not possibly be taken away from Washington and wliich could 
appropriately be shown in connection with a national and inter- 
national celebration here. We should be glad, Mr. Chairman, to 
have the committee consider that we have presented the propo- 
sition and then that we should have opportunity later to supple- 
ment what we have said. 

Washington, D. C, January 14, 1911. 

Hon. W. A. RODENBERG, 

Chairman Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions, 

House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. 

My Dear Sir: As chairman of the joint committee of the Chamber of Commerce and 
the Board of Trade of the District of Columbia, I respectfully request that you ask the 
action of your committee upon the following proposition which, if favorably consid- 
ered by the committee, may be embodied by it in a bill or resolution as may seem 
best to its wisdom; namely: 

First. That provision shall be made for the appointment of a commission to prepare 
for a celebration by the United States Government, in which the governments of 
foreign countries shall be invited to participate, at the city of Washington, of the 
opening of the Panama Canal, with appropriate ceremonies, and, in connection there- 
with, an exposition by the National Government of the history and resources of the 
United States, utilizing the new Government buildings already authorized by Congress, 
and for expositions of the history and resources of the several States, in buildings to be 
erected by the States on land to be set apart for that purpose by the United States 
within the District of Columbia, said State buildings and exhibits to remain perma- 
nently. 

Second. That the States be invited to erect such buildings and make such exhibits. 

Third. That the National and State governmental expositions thus to be provided be 
opened at the time of the opening of the Panama Canal. 

Fourth. That appropriation be made sufficient to defray the expenses of the commis- 
sion in the preparation of the proposed celebration and governmental expositions. 
Very respectfully, yours, 

Henry B. F. Macfarland. 



68 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

STATEMENT OF EON. THEODORE A. BELI. 

Mr. Kahn. I take pleasure, gentlemen, in introducing Mr. Theodore 
A. Bell, formerly a Member of the House of Representatives from the 
State of California, who will present San Francisco's case to you. 

Mr. Bell. Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee, it is 
very difficult indeed for any man to assume the task that I have 
assumed — that of presenting the great cause of the metropolis of the 
Pacific coast — without feeling the difficulties of that task and realiz- 
ing that perhaps it is not within the power of any one man to fully 
and properly present that cause. 

I have always found it very conducive, indeed, to the final settle- 
ment of such great questions as this to agree with an opponent as far 
as it be possible, in order that the real issues of the case may stand 
out so clean-cut that those upon whom the duty of deciding the 
matter must fall may clearly understand the questions to be 
determined. 

We want to agree with our brethren from the South just as far as 
we can. We believe in them. We befieve in that great land to the 
southward that they represent. We understand the local pride that 
-has aroused their zeal and enthusiasm, and has made them very able 
exponents of their home city. We concur with them that the open- 
ing of this new waterway, this connecting link of a new, great ocean 
highway that wiU girdle the globe and revise the map of the world, 
ought to be celebrated, not only by the American people, but, like- 
wise, by the nations of the entire world. We concur so far with 
them. 

We do not concur, however, in their views as to the kind of cele- 
bration it ought to be. Neither do we agree with them as to the 
point where it ought to be celebrated. It may not be a matter of 
great moment as to who originated the idea of celebrating this event 
m a fitting manner, but inasmuch as our brethren from the South 
have taken some pride in claiming that it was their initiative that 
gave to America and to the world the idea of a celebration, we believe 
that it will do much to clear up their minds if we supply the absolute 
proof upon the subject. 

^ We have said that as early as 1904 the business men of San Fran- 
cisco, the business men of Cahfornia, served notice upon the world, 
served notice upon the East and the South, upon New Orleans and 
the State of Louisiana that we would claim the right to celebrate, 
upon the soil of Cahfornia, the opening of this canal, and at the 
same time celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery 
of the Pacific. 

Mr. Chairman, I hold in my hand a periodical pubHshed in June, 
1904, giving an account of a State dinner, under the auspices of the 
promotion committee of Cahfornia, at which Mr. R. B. Hale, one of 
the leading business men of that State, the acting president of the 
Panama-Pacific International Exposition Co., now here in Washing- 
ton in charge of this fight, said : 

Nineteen hundred and thirteen was the date chosen in order to allow time for the 
completion of the Panama Canal, and in commemoration of the discovery of the Pacific 
Ocean 400 years before by Balboa. It is also essential for San Francisco to speak early 
if she desires the honor of celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal that all other 
enterprising cities may know that the occasion is spoken for. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 69 

This antedates the claim made by our friend from Louisiana by 
two or three years, and I therefore must challenge the statement 
made to tliis committee that Mr. Hale at this dinner referred solely 
to the celebration of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean. We have 
agreed that this celebration ought to be given by the people of this 
Nation for the people of this Nation and all the other nations of the 
world. We come down to the square question which can not be 
evaded, which can not be avoided, and any man that knows the tem- 
per of the American Congress knows that it can not be avoided, as to 
what sort of an exposition shall be given. 

I desire to point out to this committee the very radical distinction 
that exists between the exposition that we propose at San Francisco 
and the exposition they propose to hold at New Orleans. They 
differ in every essential. There is a radical distinction that must be 
determined before any other questions are considered in connection 
with the exposition, and that is simply whether you, recognizing the 
fact that the people of California purpose to give a great exposition 
in 1915 in commemoration of those two great events, shall be accorded 
the courtesy at the hands of Congress of a request to the President to 
extend a cordial invitation to the nations of the earth to participate. 
On the other hand, our friends come here from New Orleans asking 
what? An exposition to be given by New Orleans and Louisiana 
and participated in generally by our States throughout this Nation 
and the nations of the world? No. They have not one single 
dollar that can be used for such an exposition as we intend to give 
in the city of San Francisco in 1915. I have laid upon your desks 
files of certain papers. Among those papers you will find copies of 
two amendments to the constitution of the State of Louisiana. One 
of those amendments, the first one, provides for a tax upon the 
property of that State for the purpose of raising $4,000,000, levying 
three-eighths of a mill upon the property outside the parish of 
Orleans and six-eighths (double the amount) upon the property 
within that parish. 

The second amount provides for a further tax of two and one-half 
million dollars, and the entire burden of that tax is laid upon the 
property owners of New Orleans, within that parish. 

It is in this second amendment that they change their original 
scheme, and instead of providing that the six million and a half of 
dollars shall be paid into the treasury of that State and thereafter 
disbursed in conjunction with the exposition company, they authorize 
a private corporation, organized in that State for exposition purposes, 
to issue six and one-half million dollars of bonds, redeemable in 50 
years, bearing 4 per cent interest. And does the State of Louisiana 
pledge its credit to the redemption of those, bonds ? No. It simply 
pledges this special tax of six and a half million dollars for the redemp- 
tion of the bonds. That is the collateral security that is given; and 
the pledgor, the State of Louisiana, absolutely makes no further guar- 
anty. It goes further, and savs that the interest that accumulates, 4 
per cent during this entire period, until the bonds are finally retired, 
shall be borne by the people of the parish of Orleans. That entire 
burden is placed upon them. 

Now, when can this exposition company — this corporation of Lou- 
isiana — when can it issue its bonds to get the money to hold the expo- 



70 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

sition ? If you will refer to the second constitutional amendment you 
will find this language: 

In order that the tax authorized to be levied by the constitutional amendment 
proposed by two acts of the regular session of the General Assembly of the State of 
Louisiana for 1910 may, when ratitied by the qualified electors of the State, be made 
available for the purpose of constructing an exposition to commemorate the opening 
of the Panama Canal, the World's Panama Exposition be, and is hereby — 

Now, here is your authorization through your constitutional amend- 
ment to this exposition company to issue these bonds: 

When, and not until, the Congress of the United States shall designate the city of 
New Orleans as the location for an exposition commemorating the opening of the 
Panama Canal. 

"When the Congress of the United States shall designate New 
Orleans as the location for holding tliis exposition." Now I say this, 
and I believe that my construction is correct, and I have good reason 
to beheve that my interpretation will be concurred in by the Repre- 
sentatives in Congress from the State of Louisiana — that not one single 
dollar of that six and a half million dollars will be available for that 
exposition unless Congress creates a Government exposition at New 
Orleans. 

If rumor is correct, an action has been begun, or is about to be 
begun, for the purpose of testing the question whether or not nearly 
all of tliis burden shall be loaded, upon the shoulders of the Parish of 
New Orleans. They can not collect that tax and they can not issue 
those bonds until this Congress does what? Inaugurates an expo- 
sition at New Orleans. The initiative must be taken by Congress, 
calling their exposition into being. 

Antl further than that, it is stated here by a representative of New 
Orleans that they have raised a million or a million and a half dollars 
in subscriptions— and right here I want to express my surprise that 
in a city where, confessedly before tliis committee, a hundred dollars 
looms up as a fabulous sum, a sum that might make Croesus himself 
sit up and take notice — that the slight difl'erence between a million 
dollars and a million and a half is to be simply waived aside. It is a 
million or a milhon and a half. They start ^^•ith six and a half milhon 
and then the}^ say that it is seven and a half milhon, and one of 
them, with an overplus of zeal, wluch I pardon, says eight million. 
And before thev get through, bv the process of the snowball going 
downhill, it has been raised to $iO,000,000. 

But my point is this: It has been admitted to this committtee that 
these subscriptions for the New Orleans exposition are in the form 
of promissory notes, and those notes are conditional notes. In these 
obHgations there is written a condition that they shall not be payable 
until Congress shall designate the city of New Orleans as the expo- 
sition city. So that unless tins Congress sees fit to assume the bur- 
den — unless this Congress wants to give birth to an exposition that 
in mv judgment must be nurtured, must be protected, must be 
guarded, must be supported, must be carried on to success, especially 
in a financial way in the payment of its liabihties and obligations; 
that unless this Congress is willing to assume that responsibility, 
New Orleans is not in a position to take this great fair, becaiise she 
has not one single dollar that can be paid in if she takes the initiative 
and gives the exposition herself with only incidental recognition by 
the United States Congress. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 71 

I believe that yoi will not underestimate the great importance of 
that. Because if you call into being an exposition and if the aggrieved 
taxpa3'ers of New Orleans succeed in establishing the invalidity of 
the tax, or, on the other hand, if anything si oidd occur by which 
this sum down there should be jeopardized and become unpayable, 
you will be morally and legally bound, under the terms of the Estopi- 
nal bill pending before the committee, to pay the debts of that expo- 
sition, to see that its awards are matle, and that every single dollar 
of debt is wiped off its slate, just as you went to their rescue in 
1884-85, when it required $1,850,000 out of the Treasury of the 
United States in order that the honor of the city, in order that the 
honor of the State, and the greater honor of the Nation might be 
sustained in the eyes of the civilized world. 

What is our situation — and in my jiulgmcnt this is the meat of the 
wdiole situation, because it is primary; it is vital; it is essential; it 
is a thing that this committee nuist determine before hotels and rail- 
roads and questions of population, trade, and commerce are con- 
sidered by the committee. Th(» ])eople of the State of California, by 
a vote of more than 3 to 1, decided on the 8th day of last November 
that they would tax themselves in the sum of $5,000,000 for an expo- 
sition at San Francisco; that that sum should be collected during the 
next four years at the rate of a million and a quarter dollars per year. 

I have submitted to you a copy of the constitutional amendment of 
the State of California, which you will fmd in your files, and you can 
not find a syllable, one word, that, by implication or otherwise, makes 
this tax upon the State of California dependent upon recognition or 
indorsement of any character at the hands of the United States Gov- 
ernment. That tax will be paid in. It is for exposition purposes and 
is to be used for the exposition without recognition upon the part of 
Congress. 

Further, on the 15th day of last November the people of the city 
and county of San Francisco, by a vote of 20 to 1, authorized the 
issuance of $5,000,000 of bonds for exposition purposes. I submit 
to you a copy of this charter amendment of San Francisco, and there 
is not a word there that makes a dollar of that money dependable 
upon action by Congress. 

I go further— the exposition company of San Francisco held a mass 
meeting in the Merchants' Exchange, and the merchants and business 
men of San Francisco and the State raised in two hours' time over 
$4,000,000, a record that has no parallel in any similar financial trans- 
actions of the world. Since then that amount has been increased by 
bona fide subscriptions to the sum of $7,500,000. It is not in the 
form of conditional notes. There are no conditions attached to those 
subscriptions. They are made for holding an exposition, and nothing 
can be read into them to make them dependent upon congressional 
recognition. 

Mr. CuLLOP. I would like to ask you a question, as j-ou are dis- 
cussino^ the legal question. Each of these amendments, as I see 
them liere^ provides for the levy and collection of a tax and on 
condition that an exposition is held at a certain point — one in 
New Orleans and the otlier in San Francisco. Supjiose this expo- 
sition is by the act of Congress provided, part of it held in the city 
of Washington or Hampton Roads, and the other part in either 
one of those cities. Could not any taxpaA'er then bring a suit and 



72 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

successfully enjoin the collection of the tax under either one of 
these constitutional amendments because the very purpose for 
which it was adopted was not carried out in having the exposition 
where the constitutional amendment provided ? 

Mr. Bell. You are quite right in the application to the condi- 
tion existing in New Orleans. Their bonds can not be issued, as 
I have pointed out, until the Congress of the United States desig- 
nates the city of New Orleans as the location, and until that occurs 
it would be impossible, under their constitutional amendments, to 
levy the tax or to issue the bonds if another exposition should be 
held at the same time as the New Orelans exposition. But if you 
will read the California amendments you will find that there is not a 
word there, there is not an implication, there is nothing that can be 
read into any of these amendments that makes these levies contin- 
gent upon congressional action or designation by Congress. 

And I say that is to me an overshadowing consideration, a vital 
question that must be determined by this committee before collateral 
questions are considered. 

Mr. CuLLOP. Then it is your contention that the tax could be 
enforced under your constitutional amendment if Congress took no 
action at all toward an exposition? 

Mr. Bell. Yes, sir; and the tax in San Francisco — the bonds 
can be issued and marketed without any action by Congress. The 
subscriptions to -the stock of the exposition company in that city 
can be enforced without congressional recognition, but our brethren 
from New Orleans are not in that fortunate position. 

They are circumscribed in this matter by certain limitations, and 
it is up to this committee and to the Congress of the United States 
to meet those limitations before they may go ahead. 

Now, the statement has been made here that New Orleans will 
be ready with over $10,000,000 if Congress enacts this Estopinal bill, 
and designates the city of New Orleans. I do not know exactly 
what the subscriptions are in New Orleans, but I will take them at 
the amount figured on. A million and a half dollars, which added 
to six and a half million will make $8,000,000. Now, they tell you 
that if you will designate that city as the exposition city, they will 
immediately raise $2,000,000 more. Well, every dollar of their mil- 
lion and a half is contingent upon congressional action and if they 
have $2,000,000 more in sight why not sign it up on the same terms ? 
If men are awaiting down there in New Orleans, awaiting word from 
the United States Congress that you have fulfilled this provision of 
their constitutional amendment to put up $2,000,000, why don't 
they write the same notes, the same obligations that the other men 
have who put up the million and a half ? 

I was a little surprised and a little sorry to learn how big $100 
looks in New Orleans. It is enlarged to the most wonderful pro- 
portions, and I was inclined to discount the emphasis that was placed 
upon that sum by gentlemen before this committee; but I find that 
they are in full accord with their people at home and that public 
sentiment there as reflected by the newspapers amply bears out what 
has been said in regard to the size of a $100 bill in the State of Louisi- 
ana and in the city of New Orleans. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 73 

I read here in the Times-Democrat, of January 6, 1911, pubHshed 
in New Orleans, the following statement: 

Through the efforts of Messrs. Colo Dane and Wogan, well-known local architects, 
who have been particularly active in behalf of the subscription campaign conducted 
by the ways and means committee of the World's Panama Exposition Co., another 
$100 was added to the general fund. The subscription came in the form of a note 

Now, when they say that New Orleans is a city of some note they 
hit the right chord. [Laughter.] 

The subscription came in the form of a note, signed by the firm of J. J. Clark & Co. 
(Ltd.), of 1111 .Julia Street. 

You know that word "hmited'' takes on a new meaning when you 
read it in connection with this munificent subscription to the fair. 

I wanted to fuid out for my own satisfaction, without unduly 
interfering with someone's else business, just who this firm was, and 
I am glad indeed to say that they are a very creditable firm. Their 
standing in financial and business circles in New Orleans is A No. 1. 
They are a firm of great respectabihty, and I would like to know just 
how long it is to take at the rate of $100 from a respectable firm like 
this to raise the $10,000,000 that they intend to have for this expo- 
sition. "It took the efforts of Messrs. Tala Dano & Wogan, well- 
known local architects, who have been particularly active." 

I congratulate them. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Covington. Before you leave, Mr. Bell, the amendments to 
the constitution of California, I would like to ask this question. 
There is another provision in it that I would like to ask you to explain. 
After the provision creating the issuance of the bonds and the authori- 
zation to turn them over to the Panama-Pacific International Expo- 
sition, I find that there is a further proviso that that money shall be 
covered into the treasury of the State of California, and that it shall 
only be paid out by act of the legislature. Now, I should like to ask 
you, if, assuming a change of sentiment in California, and the well- 
known legal proposition, which, of course, you recognize, that no 
mandamus or other peremptory order of the court can bind a legis- 
lative body — assuming that the Legislature of California declines, 
say, in 1915, 1914, to make or to pass the proper act directing the 
method by which and the terms and conditions upon which money 
shall be drawn from the State treasury, how can that money as a 
matter of fact be gotten out of the State treasury ? This amendment 
provides that it shall go into the treasury. It shall only be taken out 
by proper acts of the legislature. Assuming that a future legislature 
in California declines to pass the necessary acts, how can that money 
be gotten from the treasury of the State of California? 

Mr. Bell. Now, this money, of course, has been voted by the 
people of that State for the purposes of an exposition. The same 
amendment to our constitution provides a commission of five mem- 
bers, of which the governor shall be one, and shall appoint four others, 
to take charge of the disbursement of this money, and it was put there 
for the purpose of safeguarding and having a supervisory control by 
the legislature, acting in conjunction with the commission and in 
conjunction with the corporation in San Francisco, to pay out these 
moneys. But, Mr. Covington, I can not imagine a case such as you 
picture. It is impossible for me to imagine such a case. Suppose 
that this money were voted by the people of that State for road 



74 PEOPOSED PANAMA OANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

purposes, as we have just voted $18,000,000 for the construction of 
State highways in Cahfornia, paid into the treasury to be disbursed 
by the legislature. Can you conceive of a legislature in California 
that would so willfully disregard the vote of the people, the objects 
for which the money was raised, as to sit obdurately in the halls of 
legislation and say, "You can not have the money for this exposition, 
which the people of the State, not we, have voted to give you." And 
I will undertake to say whether mandamus be the proper remedy or 
the wrong remedy, I will undertake to say that there is enough spirit 
in California to insure those appropriations, first; and, secondly, that 
the people of California would find ways and means, if a legislature of 
that character were ever found in that State, to enforce those appro-, 
priations. 

Mr. Covington. I am not questioning, Mr. Bell, the good faith 
of the people of Cailfornia. I am looking at this from its cold, legal 
aspect, and asking you to explain that. The provision for the cost 
of an exposition and a good roads movement are two widely different 
things. I simply want to know how you feel about the absolute 
liability of the people of California to get that money out of the 
treasury, as a legal question. 

Mr. Bell. This is the provision: 

That the legislature shall pass all laws necessary to carry out the provisions of this 
act, including the times and the manner in which and the terms and conditions upon 
which m^oney shall be drawn from the State treasury by said commission. 

It is not intended by this constitutional amendment to place 
plenary power in the hands of the legislature to control this fund, but 
merely to give it a kind of supervision and control, acting with the 
commission appointed by the governor. 

Mr. CuLLOP. Mr. Bell, I would like to ask you a question. The 
amount to pay the sum appropriated is to be collected by taxation 
levied from year to year. It will probably extend over a period of 
20 years — — 

Mr. Bell. In Cahfornia ? 

Mr. Cullop. I suppose so. 

Mr. Bell. No; a period of four years; a million and a quarter a 
year, beginning this year on the assessment roll of July 1, 1910. 

Mr. Cullop. Supposing the legislature at the end of the fourth 
year or the last year refused to pass the law, compljdng with the 
requirement of this constitutional amendment ? 

Mr. Bell. The legislature does not levy this tax, but the State 
board of equalization, a ministerial body of the State of California, 
must make this levy, and being a ministerial body, if they should 
decline to make it, of course mandamus would lie to make them 
perform the act. 

Mr. Cullop. But the legislature is to pass the law or the act pro- 
viding how the money shall be disbursed. 

Mr. Bell. If you will turn to page 2 of the amendment you will 
find: • 

And provided further , That the legislature shall pass all laws necessary to carry out 
the provisions of this act, including the times and the manner in which and the terms 
and conditions upon which money shall be drawn. 

Assuming that the money shall be appropriated, but giving this 
supervisory power to the legislature. 

The Chairman. That gives them absolute control over the money. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION,, 1915. 75 

Mr. CuLLOP. Suppose some legislature would either repeal the act 
or refuse to make the provision ? 

Mr. Bell. Suppose the legislature should absolutely refuse to pay 
this money ? 

Mr. CuLLOP. Yes. 

Mr. Bell. Of course, I understand that, being a legislative body, 
you could not get the process of the court, but I say this — that you 
are painting a picture there that it seems to me is most unlikely. 

Mr. CuLLOP. I am only painting one that does occur very frequently 
in legislative bodies. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Bell. One in which the people themselves have voted to tax 
themselves, raising a sum for a specific purpose and the legislature 
has refused to provide the machinery for carrying out the will of 
the people — where is that ? In Indiana. 

Mr. CuLLOP. Oh, in a great many States. 

The Chairman. We have it in Illinois. The twenty-million-dollar 
waterway bonds, for instance. 

Mr. CuLLOP. They have it in Kentucky, where they have been 
trying to bring them into the Federal courts to levy the tax and they 
have declined to do it, even after the people have voted it and there 
has been a legislative enactment. There are a number of places 
where that has occurred. Suppose that condition would arise? 
People change their minds. Suppose that condition arises; how 
would you collect that? 

Mr. Bell. If the legislature would not make that appropriation, 
there would be no legal method by which you could compel action, 
but I undertake to say that there will never be a legislature meet in 
the State of California — I know that State better than I do these 
other States you have mentioned — that would be so recreant to its 
trust and not responsive to the public will and refuse to do that 
which the people have directed and appropriated the money for. 
And I will undertake to say this, gentlemen, that if you were to 
examine the facts in every case where you say they have been con- 
fronted by a recalcitrant legislature, that you will find that there 
were some questions involved probably that are not involved in the 
case of California, the giving of this exposition. But, Mr. Chairman, 
I shall permit the gentlemen of the committee to thrash that out 
among themselves. 

Mr. Covington. Mr. Bell, just one question. I do not wish to 
destroy the thread of your argument. You do admit, as a lawyer, 
do you not, that if a campaign were made in California in which the 
issues directly raised were against the payment by the legislature of 
any more money and that a legislature elected should be averse to 
the disposition of any more of the funds, that that legislature's action 
in refusing to disburse those funds would be final, do you not ? 

Mr. Bell. That it would be final as to the members of that present 
legislature. 

Mr. Covington. That is what I mean. That if a legislature is 
elected in California at a future date, under this provision, upon the 
issue which should refuse to appropriate by proper enactment the 
required funds to carry out the terms and conditions provided here, 
that for the life of that legislature until the next one assembled the 
fund would be held up ? 



76 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915, 

Mr. Bell. I think that would deadlock, that sort of thing; but 
does it not strike you that if we were to harass our minds in the con- 
sideration of questions like that, that remote objections of which 
abundance can be brought, and I am not going to take the time to 
bring them as apphed to New Orleans — the contingencies that may 
arise there — that you never would make any progress? You never 
in the world could undertake a project that would extend into the 
future over a long period of years. No bond issues of any State would 
be safe, and all sorts of things might occur. Gentlemen, I shall pass 
right over that, because I believe that there are weightier questions 
to be determined here. 

We have come to this one point, Mr. Chairman, where we have in 
our minds the very radical distinction between these two proposed 
expositions. That situation has not been met by the gentlemen 
from New Orleans. They have simply said to you that, " when we 
raise $10,000,000 in New Orleans, that ten miUion will go just as far 
as $17,500,000 in CaHfornia." I am willing to admit that statement 
as a whole, that when they do raise $10,000,000 in New Orleans it will 
go as far as $17,500,000 in California, because from present appear- 
ances they never will raise that amount. 

But they undertake to say here in the most general way, and these 
questions can not be decided by generalizations not founded upon 
facts given to this committee, that the cost of living, that the cost of 
labor, that the cost of building material in San Francisco is 60 to 70 
per cent greater than in the city of New Orleans. They submit 
absolutely no facts. And I want to say to this conimittee that they 
can not present any facts to sustain that contention. They don't 
undertake to support their propositions. If it be 60 or 70 per cent 
over the cost of living, the cost of material, and the cost of labor, why 
not say that the cost of living in San Francisco is so much greater 
than in the city of New Orleans or the cost of labor and the cost of 
material? No. I don't know how cheaply gentlemen live in New 
Orleans and Louisiana. I have never been there, except to pass on 
one occasion through the city, but I will undertake to say that the 
well-fed people who live in fair comfort in New Orleans and in San 
Francisco expend about the same amount in the cost of living. 

Some of these gentlemen have been to California and some have not 
and they have varied recollections as to their trip to that State, but 
they could not pass through that State without knowing that with her 
millions of acres of arable and cultivatable land and fertile soil that 
California lays down before the people of that State, raised upon her 
soil, the things that would make up a feast for those that live in the 
greatest luxury in the whole world. There are her fruits; there are 
her grains; there are her berries; there are her vegetables; there are her 
fish; there are her wines — which we ship great quantities of to New 
Orleans, and which I think very often has the effect of regalino: in 
these gentlemen the fine spirit of fellowship that we saw exhibited 
yesterday afternoon and at'the reception of theirs held the night 
before — our meats, our beef, our mutton, our pork. 

So far as comfortable, yes, even luxurious, living is concerned, 
where the greatest epicure"^ of the earth might be surfeited, Califor- 
nia stands self-sufficient, and I challenge the gentlemen from Louis- 
iana to show that even this great State of theirs can provide for 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 77 

the creature wants or the comforts of mankind the things produced 
in our State. 

Those are the things. We have our own coal upon the Pacific 
coast; our own electric power to light the humble homes of that 
State, because over in those great Sierras of ours are the waters 
that can be harnessed to furnish the light and the power for the world. 
And our natural gas, our petroleum — we have everything that is 
needed in the home. And then, you come to me, where nature has 
filled our laps with her bounties to the very overflowing, and tell me 
that it costs a man more to live in the State of California, where 
nature has been more generous and kind than it has down in Louis- 
iana, where — "v\ith all deference to these gentlemen, their pride, and 
their zeal — the things that mankind has gotten from the soil have 
been wrung from the land and nature overcome. 

Now, pass on to the cost of labor. Why, they come here and they 
put upon the record of this Congress the greatest indictment against 
the laboring classes of New Orleans and Louisiana that has ever 
been spread upon the records of this House. They hold up the 
cheapness of their labor. Oh, I can see now why it is that the work- 
ing men of San Francisco alone have been able to deposit in their 
savings banks more money than in all the savings banks of Louis- 
iana, and I may go further and say the entire South. You have 
these figures before you, and I will call them to your attention. 

Cheapness of labor. Labor is not measured by the wage it receives. 
It is measured by its efficienc}^, and efficiency means intelligence, 
energy, skill, and I will undertake to say — and I desire all through 
this argument to proceed with good wall and good fellowship, and to 
say notliing that will go down here to come back to vex us in other 
days, because we are all of one country — but I will undertake to say 
this: That there is no comparison between the efficiency of the 
laborer of San Francisco and the State of California and the laborer of 
New Orleans and Louisiana. 

I do not wish to elaborate upon the social and economic and indus- 
trial conditions that exist down there, nor to exaggerate in the 
slightest degree the havoc that climatic conditions play in the effi- 
ciency of labor — and the presence of another race. But if you Avill lay 
down the efficiency and the output of a laborer in San Francisco side 
by side with that of a laborer in New Orleans and Louisiana, I will 
undertake to say that the real cost of labor down there in that section 
is as great as that of the labor in our State. 

Do they expect by holding up to us a picture of cheap labor in 
Louisiana to induce the people of the country to go there ? I will 
tell you that you can not get away from a natural law that tells you 
and me that really the standards of living, the standards of education, 
the standards of business life, commerce, and trade after all will be 
measured absolutely by the wages of the laboring man. 

Now, cost of material and cost of building in San Francisco. Has 
the governor of Mississippi, whose address I enjoyed very much and 
to which I shall later refer more particularly, even after he got out of 
the snowsheds of the Sierras, forgotten what he saw along that fine 
on the way to San Francisco ? Those great cement plants of ours. 
We have cement in our State in abundance. Have you ever gone up 
into that great redwood belt, into which railroads are now being 
built, whose redwood is shipped to every section of the world ? Ah, 



78 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL, EXPOSITION^, 1915. 

but 3^ou say: "You may have the lumber, you may have the cement, 
but you haven't got the steel." No; but we brought the steel in. 
I don't know the cost per ton of structural steel in San Francisco 
and New Orleans, but I do not apprehend that you are going to put' 
up very many steel buildings anyhow in New Orleans for this exposi- 
tion, but you will find that the cost of material in California will be no 
greater than it is in Louisiana. 

There are the three propositions which we challenge asbolutely 
and say to the contrary that from every natural standpoint, gentle- 
men, there is no difference in the cost of living, the cost of labor, the 
cost of material with us to any appreciable extent. 

That disposes of one phase to my mind of this subject, although 
before I leave the question of labor I want to call your attention to a 
sheet that I had the pleasure of preparing, showing the comparative 
banking statistics. We find our total savings deposits in San Fran- 
cisco are $153,792,186.05. The total savings deposits m New 
Orleans is $16,856,783.49. In other words, the people — and those 
who deposit their savings in these banks are nearly all wage earners. 
The wage earners there have deposited $153,000,000, we will say, as 
agamst $16,000,000. 

Now compare the situation of I^ouisiana and California. We have 
in Louisiana — I can not just turn to it, but that is submitted for 
your consideration — we have in California total savings deposits of 
$281,000,000 as against the total savings deposits of the State of 
Louisiana of $21,000,000. These statistics are given and taken from 
the report of the National Monetary Commission in 1909. 

Mr. Chairman, I feel almost like begging the pardon of this com- 
mittee for dwelling so long upon this point, but it seemed to me that 
it was of such great importance that perhaps this whole question will 
turn upon its statement. I have sat here and I have very patiently 
indeed listened to the representatives of New Orleans. I have taken 
copious notes, but I find that there is a mass of repetition, the same 
thing stated in different ways, and I have attempted in my own mind 
to block this thing out in its large phases. I would like in my argu- 
ment before this committee, if possible, to rise to a plane of argu- 
ment in keeping with the national and international character of this 
great exposition, and so I am going to take these questions that seem 
to stand out, to me at least, as the most prominent in the arguments 
you have listened to. 

I turn to the question of nearness to the center of population. 
When I started from my home in California on the 21st of November 
and came into the Middle West and to W^ashington, that was the 
thing that was presented to me as the one great argument — accessi- 
bility — upon which New Orleans depended, and I want to reply to 
that. I am not going to theorize. If we have any exposition history 
here that will throw light upon this question of nearness of popu- 
lation, let's take it. Facts should count. 

I remember the story about the fellow that started a concern to sell 
chewing gum to China with its 400,000,000 souls. As he promoted 
the enterprise, he said, "Now, we will go down there, and if we can 
get every Chinaman to chew gum, there is absolutely nothing to it." 
But they didn't all chew gum. 

Of cource if you can get your millions within a thousand-mile radius 
of New Orleans to go to the exposition, all right. They will swell 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 79 

your attendance to great proportions, but it does not make any differ- 
ence if a billion people live within that 600, 700, or 1,000 miles if they 
don't go. Now, gentlemen, as practical men, how are we to deter- 
mine that these people will go. The broad statement was made here 
that you must give it where they can go, where they ought to go and 
where they will go. I congratulate these gentlemen upon their 
wisdom and discretion in never appealing to the exposition history of 
the United States, because that exposition history of the United 
States, beginning with Philadelphia in 1876, down to the present time 
stands out here absolutely as a refutation of their argument that has 
been emphasized before this committee. The only way in the world 
to determine whether or not the people will go to the South to an 
exposition or will go to the West to an exposition is to take the lamp 
of experience, and every wise man will be governed by that light. 
Let us see what they have done in the past, because when we find 
what the masses have done in the past, what impels them to do this or 
that, or to go here or there, then we may approximately figure at least 
what they may do in the future. We have had an exposition down in 
New Orleans. It was inaugurated on the 10th day of February, 1883. 
It was given under the joint auspices of the United States, the exposi- 
tion corporation at New Orleans, and the Cotton Planters' Association 
of America. It is admitted here that it was a failure. I do not 
believe that anyone desires to speak unkindly of the fact that that 
exposition was unable to repay to the Government of the United 
States that which it borrowed, $1,000,000, and I have the act here. 
There can be no doubt about it. In order 'to be absolutely fair to 
these gentlemen, I will say that that loan was not to be repaid, except 
out of the profits or the assets of the exposition, and then the United 
States Government was to have the first call on those profits or those 
assets. The United States having the first call and never having 
gotten a dollar back, we can draw but the one inference, that when 
the exposition was over it had neither profits nor assets. There may 
have been causes at that time that operated against that exposition 
that do not exist now, and, gentlemen, I have called attention to that 
fact. 

But let us pass on. We come along to about 1903 or 1904, and our 
friend Maynard over here from Virginia, there in the neighborhood of 
Jamestown, conceives the idea that the movement of the people of 
the whole world would be to Jamestown. We will excuse him, while 
I am talking, if he desires to go. He conceives the idea that the 
landing at Jamestown from the Old World should be celebrated by 
that great event. And what does he do ? Well, he comes to Con- 
gress, and he buttonholes first this one and he buttonholes that one, 
and he gets a wedge in, and he says, "Only just give me $250,000 
now and that is all we want." Finally the boys say, "We will do it, 
but we are sick of expositions, but that is all it will cost and so we will 
start it." And so we had an exposition at Jamestown. Now, I do 
not want to speak disrespectfully of the dead. It is very irreverent. 
Time went on, and ^laynard came on with his winning smile and 
seductive manner and they got away with $1,067,000 from Congress, 
and before he got through he had gotten from the Treasury of the 
United States over $2,000,000, and some of it was a loan, and they 
did have something left down there, because I know that Maynard 
paid back $102,000 out of the $1,067,000 that he borrowed from the 



80 -PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

Government of the United States. Now we have had those two. 
They may say the New Orleans exposition was away back when the 
South was just emerging from the reconstruction period, but here 
was the Jamestown celebration in 1907, when the South had become 
strong again. 

Let us move on to Portland. We had one there, and we had one 
at Seattle. We have heard a great deal about logic, but not much of 
the real article has been produced yet before this committee. The 
logical way is to take the history of New Orleans and Jamestown, 
which ought to give you a good average, and Portland and Seattle, 
and see how they compare. I have prepared that table for you, and 
what is the astonishing result of that? Why, gentlemen of all kinds 
of distinction come liere — Gov. Saunders, and that distinguished 
Senator from the State of Mississippi, whom I respect most highly — 
and we are told that nobody will go to the Pacific coast, but the fact 
is, they did go, and they are going, and they have been going ever 
since gold was discovered there in 1849. 

How many people went to New Orleans in 1884 and 1885 ? I have 
it here. There were 1,158,840 paid admissions at New Orleans; at 
Jamestown, 1,401,000. At Seattle there v>^ere 2,766,000. We find 
this astonishing fact, Mr. Chairman, and these things ought to settle 
questions of this kind, if they are to be settled upon facts and argu- 
ment at all, that Seattle had a total attendance of 207,000 more than 
New Orleans and Jamestown combined. They run their lines out to 
the center of population and take it up pretty close to my friend, 
Cullop's district, up there in Indiana. 

Well, now, let us look the facts squarely in the face. When New 
Orleans gave her exposition in 1884, she had 30,000,000 people to 
draw from within a radius of 1,000 miles. When Jamestown gave 
her exposition in 1907, she had 68,000,000 people to draw from 
within 1,000 miles. When Seattle gave her exposition in 1909, she 
had 5,000,000 people within 1,000 miles, one-sixth the number at 
New Orleans and one-thirteenth the number to draw from that they 
had at Jamestown, and yet out there, as an eminent gentleman has 
said, desiring of course that his remarks might be perpetuated, out 
there in the ''back yard of America" at Seattle we were able to 
draw 207,000 more people and have them pay at the gate than you 
could with all your teeming millions within a radius of 1,000 miles 
from New Orleans and Jamestown. [Applause.] 

How about the cost to the Government? I don't know your 
charge at Jamestown. When I went there somebody else paid my 
admission. I don't recall, but I suppose it was about 50 cents a 
head for men like myself to get in. We have this question confront- 
ing the Government of the United States at the present time : What 
will it cost the Government of the United States ? And I want to 
say to you gentlemen that the people of California and San Francisco 
have been able to sense, I think, the feehng of the American people 
and the ideas of Congress and they know the temper and the senti- 
ment of the people, and that is the reason we state we will ourselves 
raise all the money that is needed for the exposition. 

What did the exposition at New Orleans cost the Government? 
It cost the Government $1,057,000, but incidentally that cotton 
show at New Orleans cost the Government $1.42 for every person 
that paid at the gate. When we come along to Jamestown, with 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 81 

the extravagant habits that our friend has, we find he goes New 
Orleans one better, and Jamestown cost the Government only $1.81 
for every person that paid at the gate. 

Mr. Maynard. It was worth it. 

!Mr. Bell. Do you wonder that Congress is exposition sick? Do 
you wonder that the people of America are exposition sick, and 
does any man, even with his imagination aflame as some of them are 
with this picture of an exposition at New Orleans, does any man 
believe, that knows the sense of Congress and the American people, 
that they can come now, after this disastrous experience, and induce 
Congress to father an exposition at New Orleans and to involve 
itself in the same maze of difficulty and trouble and financial respon- 
sibility that it has in the past ? 

What did it cost up in Portland and Seattle ? Well, Jamestown 
cost the Government $2,047,953, New Orleans $1,650,000, Seattle 
$637,500, and Portland $485,000. Those appropriations for Portland 
and Seattle w^ere not for Government aid. The only expositions that 
have been held in this country that have not been compelled to 
come to Congress and ask for loan or aid are the two expositions 
held upon the Pacific coast. The only two expositions that have 
been a success and have returned to those who undertook the work 
some return of their investments have been Portland, Seattle, and 
the ]Mid\vinter Fair at San Francisco. Seattle cost the Government 
23 cents for each admission, and Portland 30 cents, as against New 
Orleans $1.42 and Jamestown $1.81. 

Now, this thousand-mile radius. Statistics are difficult to read and 
to be understood, but I use them in this instance, gentlemen, because 
the nearness of population may have made some impression upon your 
minds. Look at this: The total attendance at Portland bore this 
percentage or ratio to the population within a thousand miles, 32 per 
cent. Tliat is, the total of attendance at Portland was 32 per cent 
of the people living within a radius of a thousand miles. At Seattle 
it was 55 per cent, at New Orleans 1.86 per cent, and at Jamestown 
2.06 per cent. That is compared with the population within a thou- 
sand miles. 

Now this shows one of two things, if not two things. It shows 
that on the Pacific coast a greater number of the people, by far, 
living within a thousand miles went to the exposition, or that a 
greater number of people came from a greater distance than at New 
Orleans, and those statistics from Jamestown, from Portland, and 
Seattle, to my mind, carry absolute conviction, because it is primary 
proof and we have no better evidence. Never mind hearsay and 
theory and all those things. Here are hard facts furnished this 
committee and furnished this House of Congress. There is your 
experience; there is your history; and I say, as wise men, we ought 
to be guided by those facts. 

Nearness to population. Well, if New Orleans is so close to the 
center of American population, and if the people are going to stream 
down to her exposition, attracted there by her climate and her 
resources and by her people, why haven't they gone down there 
within the last 10 years ? Talk to me about Berkeley prophecy and 
say that it is no longer to be fulfilled. Gentlemen stated here that 
at one time it could be truly said, "Westward the course of empire 
takes its w^ay," but now" "Southward the course of empire takes its 

73172—11 6 



82 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

way." Finally, lie comes down to the proposition that the whole 
course of empire since it first issued from the tablelands of Asia, that 
that great movement which has driven people along the lines of lati- 
tude, that that great natural law is overcome. And why ? Because 
they have destroyed the mosquito down in the city of New Orleans 
that carries the deadly germ of malaria and typhus. 

Before this great emigration takes place to the South, and God 
knows there can't be too many to suit me, and I can raise my voice 
in pride and praise of the South as I can of California; but before they 
ever turn that tide of empire and those currents of population to the 
South, the}" will have to destroy something more than the fever lines; 
they will have to destroy isothermal lines. We are told that the path 
of empire is bounded by the frost line on the north and the fever line 
on the south. No; fever is merely an mcident. It is the heat. 

Here is the whole story as to population contained in an official 
document. We have taken a census of the United States recently, 
and here it is. The story is not only expressed in figm'es of popula- 
tion, but it is marked there indelibly upon this map prepared by the 
Census Bureau. Look at that and then tell me that the gentleman 
is correct — that in the last decade the cmTents of population have 
turned from the West and are now setting toward the South. We 
have this increase of Louisiana, which we may take as a fair sample, 
I presume. She has increased during the last 10 years 19.9 per cent. 
California during the same period has increased her population 60.1 
per cent. That has been going on for the last 10 years, and it mil 
go on for the next decade and many decades to follow, because the 
same thing that is now luring the people of Louisiana and the South 
and the Middle West and the East across these great plains and 
through the Rockies to the fertile spots of California are the two 
things that have always determined the populations of the world ever 
since they congregated in the Valley of the Nile and the Valley of 
the Euphrates, the fertility of the soil and the clemenc}^ of the climate. 

Those two things will deterixdne where the great and civilizing 
populations of the world shall be found and to which the immigra- 
tions of the world will set ; and the tide that is flowing to that western 
country is hardly started. We have increased m California during 
the last 10 years 900,000 of people. But the distinguished execu- 
tive of Mississippi may go to California and come back with only 
recollections of snowsheds and Fresno heat and things of that charac- 
ter, but there are things in that State that, acting like a magnet, 
draw to California, to her valleys and to her hillsides and to the 
entire Pacific coast, the peoples of the world. And, Mr. Chairman, 
we come not with one word of disparagement of the South or Loui- 
siana, of Indiana, or any other State. My good old mother and father 
were born up here in the nutmeg State of Connecticut. They went 
to Iowa, which was the far west in those early days, and then took 
their ox team, trailing across the great plains 10 months on the way, 
a journey of privation and of danger that required fortitiide and 
above all faith, and theirs is but the instance of the experience of 
those and others who under that glorious sun of California to-daj'- 
are living, drawn from every State of the American LTnion. They 
are there from Georgia, North and South Carolina, Florida, and every- 
where. They have come and mingled with us, the sons and the 
daughters of the pioneers of California. The aboriginal people of 



PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 83 

that State have nearly disappeared. We are a new people in Cali- 
fornia. They have come out there and adopted that as their home, 
and we could not come before this committee or elsewhere with a 
single word of criticism and unkindness upon our lips, because we 
would violate the most sacred things in life. 

But the people are coming there. They will continue to come 
there. They have criticized the great transcontinental lines of this 
country. What is it that has banded together these two great 
oceans and the shores of this continent, these States, with bands of 
steel? Why is it that we now have eight transcontinental lines in 
operation and a ninth one nearing completion ? Just two things, 
because the people of the East and the Middle West and the South 
want to go to the Pacific coast and make their homes there. 

And then there is this great oriental trade, far beyond the Pacific 
sea. You have your Sunset route, your Santa Fe, your Western 
Pacific, your Union Pacific, your Great Northern, your Northern 
Pacific, your Canadian Pacific, your Grand Trunk Pacific built by 
the Canadian Government. They talked yesterday about these 
roads. Why there are no roads that can compare with them in 
this country or in the world . 

I have nothing to say about the four or five or six railroads that 
pierce the South. I recall that one of the eight great humorous 
books of the world was written upon the schedule and service of 
railroads that pass through the South. Whether that was merely a 
subject of humor, I can not say. But here are these great trans- 
continental lines, fuie roadbeds, splendidly equipped, every safety 
appliance provided, block signals. If the West did not provide the 
thmgs, in conjunction with the East and the Middle West and the 
South, to make these roads pay, they would not be built, and one is 
never completed before another one is started. 

That great empire out there in the West these gentlemen have no 
conception of. I wish that th^y might look upon that western empire 
as we look upon it, as we see it, and as we know it. I wish they might 
see those great undeveloped lands of California and the Pacific slope, 
millions of acres of land awaiting reclamation, that their limited 
horizon might be extended. 

They have furnished here to me and to this committee one of the 
very best reasons why this exposition should go to San Francisco, 
because, gentlemen, it is deplorable indeed that men of the patriotism 
and of the intelligence and wit, and of the bearing — and I pardon 
all these gentlemen, too — should remain so long in ignorance of the 
Pacific coast. They themselves furnish the very best reason why we 
should go to New Orleans and to Louisiana and to every other part 
of America where it has not been the good fortune of her people to 
visit the State of California and the Pacific coast, and give them an 
opportunity and an excuse to make this trip across the continent and 
look upon the wonders of that great West. 

That disposes of the second question, Mr. Chairman, and I hope 
you will interrupt me whenever the committee desires to rise. 
The Chairman. We will remam in session until 1 o'clock. 
Mr. Bell. Now, I want to pass on, Mr. Chairman, to the next ques- 
tion which has been presented to this committee, and that is the ques- 
tion of proximity to the Panama Canal. That is the second great 
point that is made by these representatives, nearness to the Panama 
Canal. 



I want to call your attention to the preamble of the Estopinal bill 
now before this committee: 

Whereas it is fitting and appropriate that the opening of the Panama Canal, and 
also the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean be com- 
memorated by an exhibition of the resources of the United States of America, their 
development, and of the progress of civilization of the new world. 

Mr. Chairman, there is some misconception as to the purposes of 
this celebration. Our friends from New Orleans assume, and wrong- 
fully assume, that it is the canal itself that is to be exhibited to the 
people of America and of the world. It is not so. This celebration 
IS not given primarily to show the people of America and of the world 
the canal itself — the ditch 43 miles long — although we hope that the 
greatest possible number may have an opportunity to see this mate- 
rial demonstration of the skill, energy, and genius of the American 
people. 

But we are to commemorate that event by what ? By an exhibition 
of the resources of the United States of America, their development, 
and the progress of civilization in the world. That is the real question 
before this committee, as to where, from a world's viewpoint you can 
best exhibit the resources of the United States, their development, and 
the progress of civilization in the new world. 

But what about the canal, sir, as a waterway with respect to con- 
ditions in the West ? Mr. Chairman, that canal is but a connecting 
link in a new ocean highway which will encircle the globe^ and, as I 
have already said to this committee, when that canal is opened the 
map of the world will be revised, because among the other lines upon 
that map will be indicated a new route around the world. Not a new 
route from New Orleans to Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, or South 
America or Central America, but a new world's highway, traversing 
the oceans of the globe. I wish these gentlemen could catch that 
conception. 

Here is this great highway, the new one swinging around the world, 
a new path. We are going to celebrate that, and New Orleans does 
not exist upon that highway. There is no more reason why, if you 
were going to celebrate the opening of a new railroad from St. Paul 
out to Seattle, that you should go down and celebrate it at Austin, 
Tex. 

New Orleans is 1,312 miles away from that new highway. San 
Francisco is 385 miles off that path. And if you are going to cele- 
brate this world's new ocean highway there is just one city in the 
world that is upon this path, in which this celebration ought to be 
held, and that is the city of San Francisco. 

Now, let us take the argument in regard to the Central and South 
American States. You will remember that unusual emphasis has 
been placed upon that by the gentlemen from New Orleans. And 
they brush aside the question of oriental trade with a shrug of the 
shoulder, or rather slightingly, by saying ''Well, California has pro- 
voked the hostility of the Orient, and therefore it is not desirable 
to celebrate in that city and invite the Orient to participate." How 
is it possible for gentlemen to hold in their minds this South American 
trade and Central American trade as of greater importance than 
that of the Orient and the rest of the world ? 

New Orleans for 200 years has had a chance to cultivate her trade 
with the nations of the Atlantic seaboard, with the countries of 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 85 

Central and South America washed by the waters of the Atlantic. 
It does not require the opening of the Panama Canal for the Mississippi 
Basin, with her outlet at New Orleans, to estabhsh cordial and 
profitable trade relations with Venezuela, with Argentina, Brazil, 
the great, populous countries of South America, the great commercial, 
productive countries of South America. The Gulf of Mexico and 
the Caribbean sea are no deeper to-day than they have been during 
the centuries that have passed. The combined trade of Argentina, 
Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela in 1909 was $1,301,123,000, 
That upon the Pacific side of South America was $345,000,000. 

In other words, the trade and commerce on the Atlantic side of 
South America is four times that of the B^cific. So you do not 
have to open the canal to give the Mississippi Valley access to the 
bulk of this South American trade; but you can open it and give the 
Pacific and the oriental people a chance at this trade. That is all I 
have to say about that, except as to population. 

On the Atlantic side of South America we have 27,402,000, on the 
Pacific side 15,449,000, people. 

Now, we come to the subject of oriental trade. I don't know 
whether gentlemen are ignorant of the commercial possibilities of the 
Orient or not, or whether they may seek to treat it lightly, because, 
once recognizing the importance of that oriental trade and its suprem- 
acy, from a point of commerce and from every point of view, over that 
of the other trade of South America, they would concede their entire 
case to the city of San Francisco. 

What are the conditions in the Orient? We find that in 1909 
Japan had a trade with America of $97,000,000; her entire world 
trade was $415,000,000. We have done pretty well to get one-fourth 
of the export and import trade of Japan. We have that at the 
present time. 

China in 1909 had a trade with us amounting to $48,000,000 and a 
combined world trade of $432,000,000. We do not enjoy, according 
to these figures, the same proportion of trade with China that we 
enjoy with Japan. 

I have been studying the politics of the world, and incidentally to 
my disaster the politics of my owti State, for the last 16 or 17 years, 
and I have been somewhat interested in the fact that around the 
question of oriental trade during the last 20 years that I can remem- 
ber has revolved the politics of the entire world. The late Secretary 
of State John Hay has left us some valuable information upon that 
point. So has Lord Salisbury, of England. We know that the 
diplomacy of Europe, and if need be the arms of Europe, have been 
employed in the last two decades especially to preserve to one or 
another commercial nation of the Old World this great trade of the 
Orient. Why have we heard so much aboiit the "open door in 
China?" Why have we heard so much about the "spheres of in- 
fluence" in China? Why have we had a great war between Russia 
and Japan? I will tell you, gentlemen of the committee. The 
trade-seeking peoples of the earth have their eye upon the Orient — 
particularly China — at this time, and America can not neglect her 
opportunities. Thank God she does live in a state of absolute peace 
with both China and Japan. There is no country in the world that 
enjoys so much of the friendship and affection of China as this great 
Nation of ours, because at the end of the Boxer riots, when the armies 



86 PROPOSED PAISTAMA CANAL EXPOSITIOIST, 1915. 

of the world were landed upon Chinese soil, during those times the 
American soldier, to his everlasting credit, conducted himself as a 
man, and when that trouble was over and the great nations of Europe 
demanded and were awarded large indemnities America, to her ever- 
lasting glory, when an award was made to her, with a magnanimity 
and a generosity never recorded before in the history of this world, 
set an example for all mankind when she said, "Not one dollar of 
this award need be paid. You keep it; it is yours." 

We may have excluded the coolie from China from our State and 
from the Nation, but men must not magnify that into a condition 
that forbids our even reaching out for this great trade. The leaders 
of thought and statesmen of China, the thinkers of Japan know 
absolutely that America is right and that she is acting wholly within 
her sovereign powers as a Nation when she says that the Chinese 
coolie or the Japanese coolie, bound to be a menace to the white 
labor of America, the best labor of the world, shall be excluded from 
American soil. 

And they say, "Distance lends enchantment." Yes, and distance 
lends distortion. We of California, when we want to know that a 
war is likely between this country and the Orient, have to get it from 
the eastern dispatches. The war scares are hatched east of the 
Rockies. Gentlemen would magnify an incident at Pasadena, where 
the good ladies of that city, acting absolutely within theu' rights, if 
they choose to do so, declined to attend a ball given in honor of the 
officers of the Japanese warsliips lying off San Pedro. They exer- 
cised the same right that would be exercised by the noble women of 
the South if they were confronted by the same problem. They sim- 
ply took their position and stated their attitude to the world. It 
was a mere incident and ought to have been allowed to pass, and I 
am surprised, Mr. Chairman, and I am not delighted with it, to 
receive so much advice from the South as to how we should handle 
the great race problem upon the Pacific coast. 

I have sat over here in Congress and I have heard gentlemen from 
northern sections of America take our brethren from the South to 
task and assume to advise them how they shall handle the race prob- 
lem that is ever present in the South, and in which they have the 
sympathy of the people of the entii'e Nation. And I have heard 
them reply, and the reply was simply this, "You live in Massachu- 
setts. You haven't got this facing you night and day, 365 days in 
the year, and we down here must be left to handle the race problem." 
And they have shown a sensitiveness on that subject and have 
rebuked those who have come in from other sections and attempted 
to say to these people confronted in their daily lives with that condi- 
tion how it shall be disposed of. 

We are about in the same position. If we have race problems on 
the Pacific coast, we want the sympathy and the cooperation, the 
aid and support of every section of the United States, and we don't 
want to be told, gentlemen, that in the past somebody, maybe 
during the Kearny riots and agitation in San Francisco, cut oft' the 
cue of a Chinaman. And I want to sa}^ that in cutting off that cue 
we but anticipated the action of the Imperial Government of China 
by some 30 or 40 years, because in the last two months an imperial 
edict has gone forth from awakening China that the Chinese cue 
shall be shorn, shall forever pass to oblivion so far as the repre- 



PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 87 

sentatives of that nation are concerned among the capitals and 
cities of the world. That is true. That is right; and we ought to 
be congratulated that we could take the cue as early as we did. 
[Laughter.] 

We want to cultivate that trade. I mentioned here awhile ago 
the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific by the Canadian Gov- 
ernment. That is a railroad to be built and operated and con- 
trolled by this Government at the North. They pass out through 
a great country that is yet undeveloped, thousands of miles of it. 
They have their terminal at Prince Rupert, and do you know why 
it is at Prince Rupert, a town with only 2,000 inhabitants, where, 
between Winnipeg, and the coast, in all that great stretch of country 
of 2,500 miles, there is scarcely a town of a thousand inhabitants. 
Why? Because Canada, with its grains and its lumber and its 
other products, is looking for the trade of the Orient, and this 
town of Prince Rupert is 300 miles nearer that oriental trade than 
the terminal of Jim Hill's road or any other road in America, and 
they are building that road for the purpose of reaching out for that 
oriental trade. 

When that great builder, Jim Hill, projected his line to the Pacific 
coast he not only had in mind Seattle and the Pacific slope, but he built 
and operated his great ships in conjunction with his road, reaching 
out to seize for his road and the people of this country the trade of 
Asia. Now, I dwell upon that because they have discounted that 
and they have said ''We don't want this trade." I say that we 
want it, just as Germany wants it, just as England wants it, just 
as France and Belgium and every other country in the world that 
produces a thing in her mills and workshops wants it. We do want 
it and we want it now more than we want the South American 
trade, because that is normally growing and coming into our hands. 
We want it more than we want the European trade, because that is 
ours at the present time and will be developed gradually along natural 
commercial lines, but here is the new field for exploitation. Here is 
an awakening people, reorganizing their military, their schools, 
every branch of public service awakening, and we want that trade 
more, we want that commerce more than we want the commerce 
of every other section of the world. 

How can we get it? Not by exhibiting at New Orleans, 1,312 
miles off this new ocean highway, an inland city 108 miles up from the 
Gulf of Mexico. We want to exhibit the resources of this country 
out there in San Francisco, the one great city on the Pacific coast, 
nearest to the Orient where they may come with facility, show us 
what they produce, and where we can with equal ease and facility 
exhibit to them the things that we must exchange. 

Commerce depends upon exchange always. We can not sell to 
the Orient without buying from the Orient, and we can come to- 
gether at San Francisco, where the Occident and the Orient meet, 
as has well been said, and there we can make that the great show 
window, not only of our own country, but it will become the great 
show window of the globe, and these people across the ocean will be 
able to exhibit to us the things that they produce and we want. 
We want that trade, and that is the big consideration and it can not 
be swept aside. 



88 PEOPOSED PANAMA OANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Mr. Chairman, I am going to leave a lot of topics to]my associates 
and colleagues. I am going to pass by these questions of hotel 
accommodations and the pleasure of a trip to California, street rail- 
roads, and all these miscellaneous questions. I am going to leave 
them to my associates to present to this committee, and I feel grateful 
indeed that you should have given me this splendid opportunity to 
present the case of my city. 

I am a native son of that State and my home is in San Francisco. 
I know that it is impossible for me or any other man to speak of that 
city and of that great State without being partial, and just as I speak 
with partiality, of course, it is inherent, I can not get rid of it, these 
estimable gentlemen from the South speak from a partial standpoint 
of their great city. And I am glad indeed that as we near the end of 
this contest we may say to one another, exchanging our fehcitations, 
that in this contest waged for one of the greatest prizes that has ever 
been given or ever been at stake, that all our relations have been 
characterized by the utmost of good will and good fellowship. 

It may have been that now and then some overzealous, or some 
overenthusiastic San Franciscan has made some unkindly remarks 
about our sister city of the South, and in turn it may be that some 

Partisan of that city has been a little hasty in his speech, and in the 
eat of argument here before the committee or outside may have said 
things of a disparaging character about one city or the other, but, on 
the whole, there never was a contest of this magnitude waged with so 
Httle acrimony, so little of ill will, and we want it to close, as it begun, 
as it has continued up to this time, right to the end, so that when 
this choice is made and our exposition is held in San Francisco, if it 
is to be held there, we may meet these representatives of the 
South in the same cordial manner that we have met them here in 
Washington. And in turn if it should be my pleasure to attend an 
exposition at New Orleans in 1915, I want to be able to take my wife 
and Httle girl and other members of my family and my friends, and 
to journey down to the city of New Orleans and to find there the same 
friendly, hospitable sj)irit that has been demonstrated here. 

I want that condition to continue, because, after all, gentlemen, 
this is a great national question. This question is one that involves 
every section of our great country and this exposition, whether it be 
given at New Orleans or San Francisco, will redound to the common 
glory of our great Nation and union of States, one and inseparable, 
and it ought to bring glory to every State in tliis great sisterhood of 
ours, and we want you people of the South to know that we have 
for you but the kindhest sentiments at this time. We want you to 
know that in all your great struggle to overcome the difficulties 
which more than anything else have pressed down upon you, that you 
have won our admiration, you have won our sympathy, and we want 
you to feel we are with you in every aspiration you have expressed 
here, in every ambition that the South may have, and when Congress 
shall have finally granted to San Francisco the courtesy that we 
ask at this committee, that merel}^ of a respectful invitation to the 
nations of the entire world to participate with us in celebrating this 
great international feat, we want the people and the men and women 
of the South to suspend the business of the hour, take the time, 
grasp the opportunity, and make this great journey to the West. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 89 

You will find it a land of a thousand wonders, speeding over those 
great plains, on the high plateaus, through the Rockies, along mag- 
nificent liillsides, until you come down at last into this great State 
of California, where I assure you a warm-hearted people dwell, a people 
that will make your stay among them one of continuous joy and pleas- 
ure. Come out there to the Pacific coast. See where v/e shall in 
the future take care of the great immigrations of Europe that will of 
a necessity be diverted from Ellis Island and pass through this canal 
to the Pacific coast. Come out there and go with us to the top of 
Mount Tamalpais and look down upon that great Bay of San Fran- 
cisco. Go up there when the navies of the world shall have assembled 
in a panorama such as never was before seen. Come out there and 
go to our Yosemite. Go to our Lake Tahoe, go down into the citrus 
fruit belts of the south, into the gredt timber belts of the north; 
every moment, if you stay there a year, can be filled with pleasure 
of that kind. 

You can make the exposition really an incident of the trip, because 
you are going and coming and your stay there with sight-seeing 
about that State in itself ^^Hlll be the greatest exposition that has ever 
been your good fortune to enjoy. 

And now we simply ask you gentlemen that you shall not desig- 
nate New Orleans as the city in which to hold this exposition, but 
that Congress shall honor the claims of San Francisco, our Nation's 
warder at the Golden Gate. We look out across the Pacific into the 
unknown, realizing that, after all, in the sure passage of time, all the 
commercial and naval conflicts of the future must occur upon her 
bosom; that just as sure as centuries ago the Mediterranean was the 
theater of the world's activity, just as sure as it slowly sliifted to 
the Atlantic, just as sure \vill the Pacific become the theater of the 
world's great naval and commercial activities and conflicts. And in 
that city by the sea that less than five years ago lay in ruin and 
ashes, and which through the indomitable will, energy, patience, 
and faith of her people has now risen from her desolation we are pre- 
pared to entertain the peoples of the earth in a manner so lavish and 
so hospitable as to make our San Francisco exposition the best that 
has ever opened its gates to the applauding visitors of the world. 
]VIr. Chairman, I thank you and your committee for your patience 
and attention. 

STATEMENT OF REV. J. P. M'QUADE. 

The Chairman. We have 15 minutes yet. 

Mr. Kahn. There are still a few moments remaining, and I desire 
to present a gentleman of the cloth whose broad catholicity has 
endeared him to all the people of the State of California — Father 
J. P. McQuade, of San Francisco. 

Dr. McQuADE. Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee, 
my kindest friend has never said of me that I was eloquent. I think 
it is impossible. And I have never been knowTi to crave for a chance 
to speak when I found others to take my place, but if I am to address 
you this morning in behalf of my beloved city of San Francisco on 
this question of a site to exploit the Panama Canal, I want to be 
frank and say that I have asked for this privilege. And I must 
confess also that I do not feel in the best of physical humor. I was 



90 PROPOSED PANAMA OANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

reared in a climate where tlie biggest wind is but a zephyr to what 
you have — a cHmate in which Tettrazini, the world's famous prima 
donna, can afford to sing on the streets of San Francisco at 9 o'clock 
at night — and coming fi'om such a climate I have fallen a victim to 
this treacherous climate of Washington. [Laughter.] 

If I address you to-day, !Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, for the few 
brief moments allotted me at your disposition, it is for the chance, 
I assure you, of having this opportunity, as a member of the sub- 
ordinate clergy, to tackle an archbishop without any danger of being 
hiu-t. But I speak with all due respect to Archbishop Blenk, and I 
would like to address myself to him alone, and if he were here — and 
I am very sorry he is not — I would pay him the compliment he 
deserves for the civic pride which he expresses by coming to Wash- 
ington to plead his city's cause. But I have come farther. And I 
would pay him that compliment, and I would say to him in all 
deference to his love and his sincerity in behalf of his most loved 
subjects, I would say, with all deference to him, that I could hardly 
sit in this audience and hear the archbishop get off some things with 
that cocksm'eness that what he said was almost unanswerable. 

The archbishop spoke of New Orleans as a great boon to the 
peoples of the twenty-odd Central and South American Republics, 
after the canal was cut through. He said that they would rush 
to New Orleans and there enjoy the close social and political rela- 
tions which accessibility would afford to them. I wonder what 
is the matter with the people of South America and the southern 
coasts. Why don't they sing the praises of New Orleans ? We 
don't hear of their presence from New Orleans. There is no canal 
necessary to cut through for their benefit. If a canal was necessary 
to put before the people of the Atlantic side of South and Central 
America such a boon as New Orleans, they must be a very thick- 
witted people to wait this long to enjoy that boon. Besides, let me 
tell the good archbishop and my friends here, whom I shall never 
forget for their kindness to me, that if there is a boon in the world 
enjo3''ed by the people of the world, it is San Francisco. 

I was educated at the College of Santa Clara, the famous Jesuit 
college about 50 miles below San Francisco, and I want to tell you 
that in the 50 years of its existence there have never been wanting 
40 or 50 young Central and South Americans, and for some 13 con- 
tinuous years there has never been a time when there was wanting 
a member of a certain family from that country. As you know, 
the Central and South American families are connected close, and 
if there has ever been a boon to them, it is located in San Fran- 
cisco, in spite of what our good archbishop urges for that boon 
wliich that fair would be to the people of South and Central America 
if held in New Orleans. 

And, Mr. Chairman, if there is a people that should rejoice when 
the Panama Canal is finished, it will be the pioneers of San Francisco, 
many of whom came from New Orleans. Others came from Boston 
and ISIew York and other north Atlantic cities, and they went down by 
boat to the Isthmus of Panama and crossed over that piece of land 
by every known kind of vehicle, and endured uncountable hardships 
to press on to that Eldorado on the other side of the world. I, for 
one, was carrieil across that Isthmus in my mother's arms, and through 
the recklessness of the driver of the stage in which I was riding, the 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 91 

whole conveyance fell into the ditch. I was picked up as if dead, 
and they went about even preparing for my burial, but I gave a sign of 
life, and I have live'd ever snice, gentlemen. And I hold, with the 
people of San Francisco, that we should put a great shaft down there 
alongside of the canal, memorializing the heroism and the desire to 
make history on the part of the good Americans who came across 
that Isthmus from the Atlantic coast to go to California. 

The good archbishop would have it appear alniost as if the primary 
cause of the canal's cutting was to benent New Orleans. Why, New 
Orleans was not thought of. It was never in the minds of those who 
originated the canal scheme. They talk about the loo'ical point. It 
is a good logical point on the river. New Orleans is a good river 
logical point. I tlo not like to quote the names of two well-known 
Anierican statesmen that I know, as I am sure all do, but I want to 
state that it is their opinion that it would be better by far for New 
Orleans to pay attention to its logical point on the river, reenforcing 
its advantages, and pay very little attention to the outside world, 
and it will conserve more to its popularity on the outside. 

But San Francisco was always in the minds of those who originated 
the canal. When De Lesseps came over here in the early days to 
take over the interests of the Panama Canal, to locate his American 
office, where did he go to locate it ? Where was the point of advan- 
tage but in San Francisco ? And not in New Orleans. It was from 
San Francisco he viewed what was before him, and it was his inten- 
tion to make San Francisco, as it were, a base of working down to 
the canal. 

Now, again, the archbishop, with all deference to him, spoke 
rather facetiousl}^ in relation to the orientals and the Orient. Mr. 
Chairman and gentlemen, there are orientals and orientals, and as 
Mr. Bell here said, there are orientals against whom we would close 
our doors — they are the coolies, they are the low element; but the 
students and the merchant men and the good, decent, educated people 
of the Orient — and, my friends, there are 800,000,000 orientals— we 
are glad to receive, and I don't like to have it said in a rather sarcastic 
way that we are opposed to all these orientals, so near to us, and do not 
want their trade. That is just what we want to build up. We want 
a great exposition and we want the orientals to exhibit there. We are 
not so narrow as that, and the Atlantic coast will share in that trade 
by the building of the canal and in the nearness of the Orient to us. 
The canal was built primarily to preserve and to help the Pacific 
coast. The canal was built to malve us come nearer, closer to the 
other seacoast of our country. The canal was built to put the Navy 
in touch with the Orient mstead of having to go around the Horn. 
When it is complete there will be no need, in case of war, Mr. Chair- 
man and gentlemen, of a ship like the Oregon to go around the Horn, 
but the great Atlantic Fleet can be promptly brought to the Pacific 
and be ready to defend us, and if we have a surplus fleet on the 
Pacific coast we can send it to the Atlantic coast. These are the 
relations of the Panama Canal, trade, and protection for ourselves. 

The logical point of the world, the vast world around which is re- 
volving the great commercial and material interests of the earth, is 
not a logical point on a river; but it is on the Pacific coast, and that 
is why we want to exploit the completion of the Panama Canal. 



92 PROPOSED PANAMA OANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Gentlemen, I have been in touch with the orientals, just as Arch- 
bishop Blenk has had an illustrious career in Porto Rico. I was all 
through the Philippine insurrection, and I want to tell you, gentle- 
men, it is my humble opinion, worth nothing more than the opinion 
that you invite, but by close contact with the Filipinos and by 
looking into the interests of the country and knowing something of 
the products of that country, as I had leisure to examine them, I say 
it is a country of great material wealth, and our country has made no 
mistake in acquiring those dominions. Our country has made no 
mistake in acquiring Hawaii, because those islands will be a great 
base of supplies in case of war, points of advantage, and the trade 
between these islands and our own will be controlled by us and by 
no outside nation. 

Therefore, I say, gentlemen talk facetiously of the Orient. In the 
Orient we find the cradle of humanity. In the Orient is the spot 
over which the star stood, manifesting to the nations of the world 
the birthplace of the Great Teacher. Geographically and physically 
the world is moving westward, and who knows but what we may 
hope, with all due consistency, for the millenium when we approach 
closer yet to that cradle whence we learn the lessons of simphcity, 
purity, ruggedness of life, without which all our material wealth 
would be worth nothing, which lessons we need for the perpetuity of 
our institutions here. 

So I talk for my beloved San Francisco. A man can talk, my dear 
friends, when his heart is not overflowing. He can not talk when 
his heart is vacant; he can not talk when his heart is too full. I 
can not talk to you now as I should like, as I wish I could, of my 
dearly beloved home, the young giant of the West standing there as 
a sentinel guarding a thousand miles of coast alone in our own State of 
California. Ah, gentlemen, the day may come when the entire 
country will look with fear and anxiety to San Francisco in case of a 
great war, and the question will be "What with San Francisco? 
How goes it with her? Is she able to stand a siege?" Because if 
she falls the country will feel the fall. There she stands, gentlemen, 
that young giant guarding our interests. She may be a little far 
away to you, perhaps, but she is, just the same, a part of this country 
as Washington, D. C, is to-day. She deserves your consideration, 
and if I have done anything, gentlemen, to help give consideration to 
the claims of San Francisco I have been amply rewarded for the 
6,500 miles I have traveled in a return trip before the holidays, and 
after the holidays, to raise my feeble voice to voice that claim. 

(Thereupon, at 1 o'clock p. m., the committee adjourned until 
Saturday, January 14, at 10 a. m.) 



proposed panama canal exposition^ 1915. 93 

Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions, 

House of Representatives, 

January I4, 1911. 

The committee met at 10.30 a. m., Hon. W. A. Rodenberg (chair- 
man) presiding. 

The Chairman. The committee wih be in order. I regret that 
there are not more members of the committee present. I do not 
know whether the hospitaht}^ of San Francisco or New Orleans is 
responsible for their absence this morning. The hearings will be 
printed, however, and the members will be given an opportunity to 
read any of the statements made. 

Who will take charge in the absence of Mr. Kahn ? 

STATEMENT OF HON. EVERIS A. HAYES, A REPRESENTATIVE 
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. 

Mr. Hayes. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I 
regret that upon this occasion we who represent the interests of San 
Francisco are in a position where we must appear to be ungenerous or 
ungracious to our sister city, New Orleans. The matter of the 
celebration of the opening of the Panama Canal has been truly said 
to be a matter not only of interest to San Francisco and New Orleans 
but to the people of the whole country. The greatest event in 
history should not only be celebrated in a fitting manner but in the 
most fitting manner possible. And so it is not a (juestion altogether 
of the wishes of New Orleans and Louisiana, or of the wishes of 
San Francisco and California, but of what is the wise thing to be 
done in this case. At what cit}^, in what part of the country, can 
this celebration be most fittingly and most successfully held ? 

A large amount of statistics have been presented by our friends, 
showing the commercial importance of New Orleans and the great 
value of the products of the State of Louisiana. Now, Mr. Chairman 
and gentlemen of the committee, we freely admit that New Orleans 
is a great commercial city; one of the great commercial cities of this 
great country. We admit that Louisiana, in its products and its 
resources, is one of the great States of this country and destined to 
become greater. We freely admit that her ])eople are among the 
most warm-hearted and hospitable in this warm-hearted and hos- 
pitable country; and in this matter I speak not from hearsay but 
irom personal experience, because I have had the pleasure of accept- 
ing and enjoying their hospitality^. 

But all this has nothing to do with the question at issue. In the 
first place New Orleans has had within the last 25 years its inter- 
national exposition. In the year 1884-85 it held such an exposition. 
I know this, too, because I was present and spent a number of days 
at that exposition. The exposition was all right. I will not criticize 
its character. In many respects it was the most unique and interest- 
ing I have ever attended. It was an international exposition. I 
know, because I saw the exhibits of foreign peoples at that exposition 
in large number, and some of them very large and very interesting. 
We know also that it was an international exposition, because after 
it was over, and the exposition company not being able to pay the 
money to mint the medals which were awarded to foreign exhibitors 



94 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

or to give them the prizes which were due them, the Government of 
the United States appropriated the sum of $350,000 to pay these 
awards and to pay for, execute, and deliver the medals to which the 
exhibitors were entitled. So that this was an international exposi- 
tion, participated in not by New Orleans alone, not by Louisiana 
alone, not by the people of the South alone, but by the people of all 
the States of this Union, and, as I have said, a very large number of 
exhibitors from foreign countries. 

Now, New Orleans having had its chance, we feel that San Fran- 
cisco, having never had an exhibition of this kind, is entitled to its 
turn. The Mississippi Valley likewise has had two other international 
expositions besides the exposition at New Orleans, to wit, Chicago and 
St. Louis, and the Pacific coast as yet has never had an international 
exposition, and, as I said, we feel it is our turn now to have such 
an exposition, and to have the privilege of entertaining the people 
of the United States and of foreign nations in our homes. 

In spite of the fact that in 1884 and 1885 New Orleans had Govern- 
ment aid, as has been shown ; in spite of the fact that then, as now, it 
was the logical point ; in spite of the fact that it was then as now near 
a large population; notwithstanding all this, this exposition, so 
far as attendance and financial results are concerned, was a failure, 
admittedly so. 

Now, what made it a failure ? In the first place, that exposition 
was held in the winter time. In the wintertime nobody takes an 
extended vacation unless he is very rich. The schools are then all in 
session, the colleges are in session, the high schools of the land are 
going; none of the students of these institutions of learning can take 
advantage of these expositions; no matter how intelligence-giving 
they may be or how elevating, they can not take advantage of them. 
The business man is then in the busiest part of the year. He never 
takes his vacation in the wintertime. He waits until the heat of 
summer drives his customers from him and leaves him leisure and 
gives him a desire to get away from the cares and burdens of his 
business life, to get a change somewhere in a vacation. And so with 
everybody that has money or can get leisure to take a vacation; we 
all know that they take it in the hot part of the year— June, July, 
August, and September — and not in the wintertime. Therefore only 
a small number of people from abroad or from the different parts of 
this country attended the exposition in New Orleans, although at that 
time expositions were new in this country. We had then held but 
one, that at Philadelphia, and the people were eager; they had a keen 
appetite for the sights they found at expositions. Now the people 
of this country have been surfeited with expositions, and if in the 
winter of 1885 the exposition in New Orleans was a failure what would 
it be in 1915? 

There is another reason for the failure of this exposition at New 
Orleans. First, the people that make an exposition a financial suc- 
cess and a success from the standpoint of attendance will come from 
within 250 miles from the place where that exposition is held. Within 
250" miles of the city of New Orleans— and I do not say this in any- 
unkind spirit — one-half the population is colored. With their 
proverbial habits and lack of thrift they would have no money to 
attend an exposition, and doubtless the most of them would have 
no desire to attend. Their business intelligence and education have 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 95 

been such that they have not yet a desire to visit an exposition and 
to go through the labor and spend the time necessary to examine 
it. Secondly, a large proportion, as has been shown by the statistics 
that have been offered here, half, say, of the balance of the popula- 
tion have not the means to spend even the necessary money to go 
250 miles and to spend a few days in New Orleans to see the exposi- 
tion, and hence they did not go. 

So that here we have two conditions that made the exposition in 
New Orleans in 1884-85 a failure. Those same conditions exist and 
will operate in 1915 as they operated in 1884 and 1885, and would 
make an exposition a financial failure held in the ^vinter time in 1915. 

Now", our friends have not yet advised us when they are going to 
hold this exposition; whether in the winter or in the summer. We 
will therefore suppose that they hold the exposition in the summer, 
and no exposition can be a success in this country unless it is held in 
the summer, because, as I have already indicated, that is the time of 
year when our people take their vacations, when they go traveling for 
pleasure, and not in the winter. When a business man or a student 
at one of the colleges or any other person, at the end of a hard year's 
work, begms to look forward to the time when the burdens that he has 
been bearing for the whole year will be laid aside and he can go away 
from his home, from liis office, from the cloister, for a little while to 
get a change and a rest, does anybody cast longing eyes toward the 
steaming swamps and bayous and levees of Louisiana ? Do they look 
with longing anticipations of pleasure and relaxation to the mosquito- 
infested region of the southern JMississippi A^alley? Why, of course 
not. No man in his sane senses would ever tliink of spending any 

{)art of his hard-earned vacation in that direction. No; he looks with 
onging eyes toward the cool mountains, with their caps of perpetual 
snow, to the cool, inviting lakes of the North, to the invigorating 
breezes of the sea. He never thinks of turnmg his eyes to the South, 
and I want to tell my fi'iends from New Orleans that if they should be 
successful in persuadmg Congress that that is the place to hold this 
great exposition they will be most seriously disappointed if this expo- 
sition is held in the summer time, and the lack of attendance which 
characterized their exposition- in 1884 and 1885 will not begin to 
express the lack of attendance and interest that will be manifested 
in 1915. 

Wiry, if any man should go against the promptings of his nature, 
should go against the allurements of the cooler places of the land 
and turn his face to the South and finally land in New Orleans, you 
all know that after a trip in the summer time through the Mississippi 
Valley, where the air is laden with moisture, where it is heavy because 
there are no cool breezes to change its currents, when he got there he 
would feel the same languor and lack of desire for effort that every- 
body feels at that time of the year in that latitude. He would feel 
as though he had got a severe dose of the hookworm. That is the 
way he would feel, and that is the way everybody there feels when 
that time of the year comes. If he had ambition enough to get 
himself up and go and endure the labor, the exertion of taking in 
the exposition, he would find there so very few people that the 
streets and w^alks about the exposition and the corridors and alleys 
in the exposition would remind him of a perpetual Sabbath on 
account of its quietness, and the few feet there would at every step 
awake far resounding echoes in the vacuous loneliness of the place. 



96 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Now, I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet; but I know 
the Mississippi Valley, having been born there and lived there half 
my life, and I think I know that an exposition would not be attended 
by any large number" of people in the lower Mississippi Valley during 
the hot months of the summer, when, if it is to be a success, when, 
if there is to be any attendance that will make it a success, that 
attendance must come in those months. 

Now, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, it seems to me that those 
considerations should be conclusive of this question. I do not 
believe that the physical conditions, the geographical situation of 
New Orleans is such that it would be possible at any time in the 
year for them to hold a largely successful exposition. That is saying 
nothing against the people of New Orleans or of the State of Lou- 
isiana. Those are conditions of nature for which they are in no way 
responsible and which no matter how hard they may try they can 
not overcome. 

Now, to continue and take up somie matters which were presented 
at former hearings. One gentleman dilated at great length upon the 
difference in the cost of reaching New Orleans and San Francisco. 
Now, gentlemen, when a man who is able to attend an exposition 
begins to make his plans, or when he is able to take a vacation he 
begins to make his plans, he does not figure those things so very care- 
fully. He thinks of the place he would like to go to. He thinks of 
the things he would like to see. He thinks of the rest and change 
that he would like to have, and although the place where he wants to 
go may cost him a few dollars more to get there than the place he 
might go he goes invariably to the place where he wants to go. Why, 
does any man in Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi say to himself, "I 
am going to have about two weeks' vacation. I can go to the Ever- 
glades of Florida a great deal cheaper than I can go to the lakes of 
Maine or to the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River, or to the 
shores of Lake Superior, or to the mountains ?" Why, of course not. 
No man in his sane senses ever thinks of those Everglades for a 
moment. He knows that the water is just as clear — and there is 
plenty of it in the Everglades — but the surrounding conditions are 
not such as to attract him, and so of course he does not count the 
difference in the cost. 

Now, in the first place we are expecting — indeed we have assurance 
of very low^ rates to California if the exposition is held there. We 
have now a rate in the springtime for 45 or 60 days of $25 from the 
Mississippi Valley; a colonist rate they call it. We shall certainly get 
a round-trip rate of $50, and we expect to get one very much lower 
than that from this center of population. And what man that has 
never seen California and desires to take two weeks' vacation would 
stop to balance the $50 that it would cost him to go to San Francisco 
and the twenty or sixteen, or whatever it is, that it may cost him for 
a round trip to New Orleans ? Why, there is not one in five hundred 
or a thousand that would think of it for a moment. There is nothing 
in it. Men spend their money when they think they are going to get 
a return for it and not just for the pleasure of spending it. If they 
are going to get their money's worth, they will go to New Orleans; if 
not they will not. If they are going to get their money's worth in San 
Francisco, they will go to San Francisco, and if they think they will 
not they will stay away. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 97 

Now, as to the discomfort. The governor of Mississippi dilated 
greatly on the discomfort of reaching San Francisco, and he spoke 
of the arid plains and the snowsheds and the heat of some place in 
California after he got there. Now, gentlemen of the committee, I 
have made the trip from this part of the world to San Francisco in 
the last 25 years more than one hundred times. I have been over 
every possible combination of route that you can get up in going 
and returning fi'om here. And I want to tell you just briefly about 
the experience that a man will have who goes from Chicago, say, to 
San Francisco, for the first time. In the first place, we are going to 
travel in the summer time, when the exposition will be held. No 
man in his sane senses would voluntarily take the southern route to 
go there at that time. 

The least interesting of the through routes that I know of is the 
central route, the Union and Central Pacific. I will take you just 
for a moment along that route. We leave Chicago when the air is 
proverbially what it is in summer almost always in Chicago, and 
generally in the Mississippi Valley ; when you have to have a fan ; you 
feel as though you needed one all the time to keep the breath of life 
in you, to keep you from smothering to death. You sweat and pant, 
you feel that awful lassitude, and as though you did not want to do 
anything. It takes a great exertion of the will to get up any great 
effort of mind or body. 

You get aboard the train; you are even more smothered than you 
were wlien you entered it. You go through the States of Iowa, 
Illinois, and the plains of Nebraska. You are too indolent to read 
or to look at anything as you pass on the way, or to think. You 
do not want anybody to speak to you. You just want to be let 
alone to pant, perspire, and cuss the weather and everybody con- 
nected with the railroad. That is the way you feel. I have been 
there many times. 

Now, you get through the plains of Nebraska. You begin to 
climb up on the great plateau on the east side of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and as soon as you get up where you begin to feel the cool and 
invigorating breezes from the Rockies and their snow-clad peaks,- 
you begin to sit up and take notice right away. Your perspiration 
dries up; you begin to straighten up; you fill your lungs and take in 
all 3"ou can of that sweet, pure, cool, and invigorating, tonic air. 
Then you can think, and you desire to see the great wonders that 
you will see as you climb over the Great Divide. And on the other 
side you come to another plateau, after you have passed these great 
peaks and these rocks, that make one think how small he is in com- 
parison with some of the other creations of the Almighty. You pass 
over on the other side and for miles and hundreds of miles you con- 
tinue along that great plateau Avith the same cool, invigorating 
breezes, and every step of the way is full of intense interest to the 
man who has ncA^er seen it, until you come to the Echo and the 
Webber Canyons, wonders of nature, on this side of the city of Qgden. 
Finally you reach Ogden, at the foot of the beautiful snow-capped 
Wasatch Mountains, a gem between the mountains and the great 
Salt Lake. And there still you feel those same invigorating, cool 
breezes, and everything that you see gives you an intense thrill of 
pleasure, because jou are physically in a condition to enjoy it. 

73172—11 7 



98 PROPOSED PANAMA OANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Then you cross the Great Salt Lake — yes ; really cross it on trestle- 
work — and you see its wonders, its great beaches of salt, and its blue, 
heavy water. You still continue to have those same cool breezes 
coniing up to you as you go along, and you finally reach the arid 
plains, the Great Arnerican Desert, after you pass some distance 
beyond the Great Salt Lake, where in spots there is alkali, and where 
sometimes is dust and sometimes there is not, because they have 
rains upon those plains sometimes ; but even admitting the dust and 
even admitting that sometimes it is hot on those arid plains, it is not 
always so even in summer time. That dust can be kept out of the 
cars for the few hours you are passing, and every little way on those 
arid plains you will come to oases where water has made the desert 
to blossom as the rose, and the sight wiU fill you with delight and 
wonder, not only because of themselves, but because of the surround- 
ings in which you will find them. 

Then after a few hours you begin to climb up the great, beautiful 
Sierra Mountain Range, and you look down into its cool, deep, almost 
dark blue canyons as you pass along the road. You ride around the 
wonderful curves of that road and look down and up at the wonders 
of nature, and still the same invigorating mountain air is surrounding 
you, and you have that same feeling of energy and pleasure with which 
you entered the Rocky Mountain region. 

Finally you come to San Francisco and California, where every 
moment that you stay will be a pleasure, because the climate there 
can not be beaten anywhere in the world — and I have traveled 
largely — where every breath you draw will be an exhilaration and an 
inspiration; where you will sleep every night you are there under at 
least one and probably two good, warm, woolen blankets. Where 
you wiU never see a mosquito. I have lived in California and my 
home is out in the country, and I have been through whole summers 
and never saw or heard one mosquito. The rest that you will get will 
be refreshing and the things that you will see will be among the 
greatest wonders of the world. 

Who that lives and has not seen California or the Yv^est does not 
dream that sometime he will see the Yellowstone National Park; 
that he will see the big trees of the State of Cahfornia; that he will 
see the Yosemite Valley, that greatest wonder and marvel of nature; 
that he will see the ever-blooming flowers of the State of California 
and its dehcious fruits with changing variety going through the 
whole summer. On our table at home from the Fourth of July to 
Thanksgiving every day we have fresh peaches, plucked that morn- 
ing from our own trees. He will see all these things; he will taste 
these fruits; he will enjoy the perfume of the flowers. The man 
that has dreamed this, as most of our people in the United States 
at lea^t have dreamed it, will not count the cost when somebody 
says: It is going to cost you $20 or $25 more to see all this and to 
enjoy all this than it is to go down to New Orleans and fight the 
mosquitoes and suffer the heat and see — what ? Why, nothing but 
the cane fields, swamps, and bayous of Louisiana. 

Now, this, it seems to me, ought to weigh a great deal with this 
committee and make them know that the people want this exposi- 
tion held where they want to attend it and where it will not oe a 
physical pain and anguish and deprivation to go there. Now, Mr. 
Chairman and gentlemen, we of California do not regard this expo- 



PEOPOSED PANAMA CAXAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 99 

sitioii as the principal show that we propose to give tiie people who 
come to see. We merely regard it as incidental. It being held 
there will make cheap rates for the people to come. It will afford 
an excuse to every man who can take a vacation to go to California 
then instead of at some future time, or perhaps never, and so we 
look upon this exposition as only incidental. We who are familiar 
with the Pacific coast know that the Pacific coast and the State of 
California, and even San Francisco, to those who have never visited 
those places will be vastly more enjoyable and a greater exposition 
and a greater educational influence, too, Mr. Chairman, than any 
exposition that the money or the ingenuity of man can possibly 
gather together. 

One gentleman spoke of the increased hotel accomodations in 
New Orleans. When I visited the exposition there, I was a resident 
of northern Wisconsin. I went from Lake Superior in Wisconsin 
in March, 1885, to visit the exposition in New Orleans. I sent word 
to the St. Charles Hotel that a party of seven of us would be there 
on a certain date and we desired accomodations. I sent this letter 
something like a month before the time we started. We reached 
New Orleans early in the evening. The Hotel St. Charles did not 
even have a cot to give us. We sought other accomodations in minor 
hotels and boarding houses without success. We visited the head- 
quarters of the exposition company and the best they could do for 
us was to send us off a mile or two from the center of the town to a 
private house where a good, warm-hearted household of New Orleans 
received us and entertained us while we were there. We had no fault 
to find with them, because they did the best they could for us; but it 
was not the sort of entertainment to which we were accustomed. 
Now, the crowd in New Orleans at this time was not great. I would 
not call it a crowd, but the hotel and restaurant accomodations were 
absolutely inadequate then, and if for the attendence they had then 
it was inadequate, unless they have been recently greatly supple- 
mented, and I do not think that they have been greatly, the hotel 
accommodations in New Orleans will be wholly inadequate to handle 
the crowds which our friends are confidently expecting. 

For one moment let us compare the accommodations of the two 
cities. We have not been building in San Francisco two or three new 
hotels in the last five years. We have built over 1 ,200 hotels and lodg- 
ing houses in San Francisco during the last five years. I have the exact 
number here, 1,257. And we have furnished all of them with the 
newest, up-to-date sanitary fixtures, with the very latest conveniences 
in even the cheapest of them. You can get any sort of prices you 
want there, down to 25 cents a day, for accommodations, and tney 
will be as good as they are anywhere in the world for the money. 
I will guarantee it. Compare these accommodations with the accom- 
modations that our friends from New Orleans say they have, or will 
have. I say there is no comparison. There is no city in the United 
States that is better equipped to handle visitors and tourists than the 
city of San Francisco to-day. I know of none, and I have visited 
every city of consequence in this country; and I do not believe there 
is a city in the world that can handle great crowds and give them the 
same attention and furnish them the same convenience at the same 
prices that San Francisco can and will furnish them if they come 
to the exposition in San Francisco in 1915. 



100 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

Now as to the street-car accommodations. I want to say the same 
of the street-car accommodations in San Francisco. I do not beheve 
there is a city in the workl that has as fine street-car accommodations 
as we have in San Francisco. We have street cars going in every 
direction, starting from the ferry building as a center and out Market 
Street, and branching off to every part of the city. We have univer- 
sal transfers in both directions, so that a man for a 5-cent fare can go 
anywhere in San Francisco in comfort and ease. The cars are modern 
and up to date, as comfortable cars as anybody travels in. 

It has been said that the exposition should not be held in San Fran- 
cisco because the exhibitors can not go to that city without trans- 
shipping their exhibits, and that many of these exhibits being break- 
able and liable to be damaged the exhibitors will not wish to take the 
risk. Why, gentlemen of the committee, there is nothing in that. 
San Francisco is a seaport, and the merchants and manufacturers of 
New York, Boston, Baltimore, and all the Atlantic and Gulf ports, 
when the canal is finished, as it will be in 1915, can reach San 
Francisco just as safely and practically just as cheaply as they can 
reach New Orleans. More than that. New Orleans is not the only 
city besides New York and some other of our Atlantic ports that can 
boast of a steamship line from Europe. There is a steamship line^ 
the Kosmos Line, that has regular steamers plying "between San 
Francisco and Hamburg, and when the canal is completed, as it will 
be, of course, in 1915, there will be more. And we should also bear in 
mind that St. Louis and Chicago are inland cities, and there was no 
trouble about exhibitors reaching those towns when they desired to 
exhibit their products. There was no trouble about reaching Seattle 
and Portland. There is nothing in this argument at all. Exhibitors 
will just as gladly come to San Francisco as to New Orleans. Yes, 
and when you take into consideration the dryness of the atmosphere 
and the less liability of products to mold you will recognize that they 
will be very much more pleased to come to San Francisco than they 
will to any place this side of the Rocky Mountains. 

Now, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen — because I have 
already taken more time than I should — San Francisco has passed 
through probably the most awful experience that ever came to any 
city in the world. With a pluck which we feel proud of, and I believe 
all the people of this country feel proud of, its citizens have laid to, 
and in the last five years they have rebuilded their city. It seems to 
me, Mr. Chairman, that if any cit}^ in the United States has the right 
to come to the Government and ask for aid to give an international 
exposition in order to draw the people of the world to that city, San 
Francisco ought to have that right. Such an exposition would do it 
much good; it would help materially to pull its people over the hill, 
which they have already climbed nearly to the top out of the slough 
into which the great fire of 1906 plunged them, and it seems to me 
that if any city has the right to come and ask Government aid, the 
city of San Francisco ought to have that right. And yet, with the 

Sluck which is characteristic of our pem:)le, they are not asking the 
rational Government for one dollar. Our people are putting it all 
up, and we do not propose to ask for one dollar, notwithstanding the 
sneers of oiu' friends from New Orleans, who believe that by and by 
we are going to come back and ask for a big appropriation. I am 
authorized to say that we shall not ask for one dollar from the Gov- 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 101 

crnment of the United States, now nor in the future, and I speak for 
our whole delegation. The simple boon that we ask only is that the 
Government of the United States will give an invitation to the nations 
of the world to come and participate with us in celebrating a great 
historical event, in the city of San Francisco, in 1915. 

Mr. Hayes. Now, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I take great 
pleasure in presenting Mr. Joseph Scott, president of the Chamber 
of Commerce at Los Angeles. 

STATEMENT OF MR. JOSEPH SCOTT, PRESIDENT OF THE 
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF LOS ANGELES, CAL. 

Mr. Scott. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, the 
masterly review of this situation by Mr. Bell yesterday, particularly 
upon the legal and financial issues involved; likewise the presenta- 
tion of the matter by Mr. Hayes this morning, does not leave very 
much for me to say, except that inasmucli as certain references were 
made of a character indicating the desire of the New Orleans people 
to educate the people of the world, possibly I may be able to suggest 
two or three thoughts at this time which might have a little bearing 
upon that phase of the situation. 

Personally I do not know whether it is much use to talk further to 
this committee or not. There is a certain wdiimsical air of patience 
and resignation about some of you gentlemen that indicates you are 
willing to sit all day and all night, and give us the time of our lives, 
to talk to you. And yet I know that you are men well informed on 
these questions, and have had this controversy so thoroughly pre- 
sented to you that every phase of this subject must be more or less 
wearisome and tiresome. But when the governor of Mississippi and 
the Senator elect of Mississippi, men who ought to be thoroughly 
versed in state affairs and national questions, will throw into the 
controversy involved here the question of their experiences goin^ 
out to California, I hope the committee will pardon me if I just dwell 
for two seconds upon that proposition. It is a little tiresome to go out 
to California, and to hear these men give their experiences. One would 
think we all made a mistake in ever going out to California. 

I wonder if Gov. Noel, when he passed through the alkali plains of 
Arizona, ever thought of the staunch heroism, for instance, of the 
uncle of the present governor of Louisiana, who, somewhere between 
New Orleans and California, laid down his bones upon that desert in 
order to get to the promised land. Why, gentlemen say that senti- 
ment is not supposed to be in this issue. You can not drag it away 
from this issue. Do some of you fellows want this ex])osition because 
you want to develo]:) some cotton industry or on behalf of some of 
the industries peculiar to your locality '^ You have got to consider 
the keen, red blood of w^omanhood and manhood. Why, those bones 
are scattered all the way from New Orleans to California and on every 
highway to California from the Mississippi Valley, and now these men 
say that sentiment is not in this issue — these men who take a Pullman 
car so they may save their souls and rest their bodies going across the 
same way. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I am surprised that my friend Wilhams, of 
Mississippi, has been so immersed in this smug atmosphere of Wash- 
ington, where the grippe takes you in 24 hours — I am surprised that 



102 PEOPOSED PAISTAMA CANAL EXPOSITION,, 1915. 

he has been so saturated with books and legal questions and things 
of that kind that when he crossed the plains he could not see the 
beauties of California. 

Do you wonder, Mr. Chairman, that a great number of the people 
of this country go to Europe and do not know any more about San 
Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Spokane than they 
know about Tupelo, the illustrious name of which I first heard in this 
room ? 

In order to learn geography, gentlemen, you have got to travel. 
You have got to travel to learn it. Why, gentlemen, one of the 
conditions to teach history — and I speak with a slight knowledge of 
the question, because I am and have been president of the board of 
education in my city for the last four years — before you learn history 
you must lay down the foundation for it; before you come to historical 
questions you have got to learn geography, and I want to have the 
privilege of taking Noel and Williams, my two illustrious friends — 1 
want to take them along the route that Father Kino took on foot, 
from El Paso up through New Mexico and Arizona, that bare-headed, 
sandal-footed friar, full of the milk of human kindness. I want to 
take them with me, and I want to go with them to the Grand Canyon 
of the Colorado, and I want them to look at that great chasm 8 miles 
across and 1 mile sheer down — those gentlemen from the Mississippi 
Valley. And I want them to go right clown into the bosom of that 
great canyon and look at that little river down there. I want these 
men to go with me and forget New Orleans and Louisiana for one brief 
month, because I tell you, gentlemen, after they have been exhilarated 
by the fire and the electric atmosphere of California, and with the 
natural spirit they have got, if they do not check the Mississippi River 
and make it behave itself for the rest of its natural life, mth the 
enthusiasm they will get out of a trip to California, I miss one great 
big long guess at it. 

These people baffle every description I have ever heard. How 
people with the view they have from New Orleans can get the charm 
and the poetry, the business ability, the imagination, to see in the 
vista around New Orleans anything to compare to California is the 
thing that has made me admire those men more than anything else. 
No wonder the women love them. No wonder they have a charm 
that makes all women on earth say that the dear old southerners after 
all are the best people on earth. If- I could take the mellifluous 
accents and the musical modulations of their voices back to southern 
California with me and use it in my professional capacity it is a cinch 
I could make my fortune and hypnotize every juryman in court. 

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, these men are en- 
titled to the fair, but their city and their surroundings are not. 
If San Francisco and California could pack this committee room 
with a delegation like those New Orleans fellows have, if we poor, 
few representatives of the State of Cahfornia could use anything 
Hke the charm these people have wdth them, we would walk back 
easy victors in this controversy. Gentlemen, the people know New 
Orleans; the people know the Mississippi Valley; the people know 
the great Soutli; the people know the men who have shed their 
blood in that great cause. We have such types of men in southern 
California, where I come from — and sometimes I even have got to 
tell men from San Francisco where Los Angeles is on the map. You 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 103 

know this city pride is a fine thing; it is the finest thing on earth; 
it means the same thing as domestic fehcity. Because if you can 
not agree with your own city, God help you. Hence I may be 
pardoned this allusion to my own fair city of Los Angeles as one of 
the brightest jewels in the diadem of the Golden State. 

Southern California is honeycombed with men from Mississippi, 
with men from Louisiana, with men from Tennessee, with men from 
all sections of the great Southern States. They came across those 
plains and settled down in Cahfornia, and we have one great homo- 
genous mass of people from every State of the Union. As we go up 
to the Northern States we see the same condition of afl'airs, and, 
gentlemen from the East, and, gentlemen from the South and the 
North, you need the education of that trip. Do not stop within any 
one of our hotels and gaze upon the four walls of your room to give 
you a picture of California. Not at all. We expect to take you 
u\) and down and across our great State after the education of your 
journey across the continent. 

" Why, gentlemen, in the old days, when the poor old pioneers got 
to Kansas City, people said, ''God help you if you get across that 
river and start west. If you try to get to California, you will die on 
the way." But the old California pioneer painted on the cover of 
his old praire schooner the old legend "California or bust," and 
with that kind of ginger and pluck and endurance and energy he did 
get to California. 

You men need this education. Not only do you need this educa- 
tion, you men from the North and the South and the East, but the 
people of California need the education. We ought to see what 
manner of people grow in Louisiana, what kind of people grow in 
New York, grow in Indiana, grow in Illinois; with all the climatic 
and other discomforts they have endured during their lives, and 
survived it, they ought to take a chance upon our California weather. 
We want to give our people of the rising generation of California 
some idea what their forbears went through. Noel and Williams 
want to travel that route, and I hope to God as they come through 
Arizona a great, big sandstorm will come up and just simply choke 
their car full of alkali dust, and they will appreciate the memory 
of their illustrious forbears and try and be worthy of them. 

Gentlemen of this committee, these young bloods of San Francisco 
needed the fire; these people from New Orleans needed the fever; 
they needed a pestilence. It is easy to mix gin fizzes and Sa- 
zarac cocktails, and some of them are mighty good. It is a very 
pleasant accomplishment to have an educated taste in that direction, 
but these luxuries are only the side issues to a great race. The great 
races have grown up along rugged lines. They are the people who 
can suffer and endure like these people from New Orleans have 
endured and yet survive and wax lusty. Therefore, we of California 
want to bring to the rising generation, to our children, something of 
the manhood and womanhood of the other parts of the country, so 
that they can take notice and bear witness to what they have 
endured, too. 

And, gentlemen, let it be said here in thanksgiving to God you 
have no South now. You have no Mason and Dixon line. But I 
do not know yet whether we haven't got a Mississippi line. I do not 
know yet, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of this committee, whether 



104 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915, 

the great percentage of this country can look across the Mississippi 
Kiver, particularly out west to Calilornia, without having the vision 
clouded by local environment. And yet there is out there in Cali- 
fornia a class of people that have done something for this country, 
and they have asked no Government aid, as Mr. Hayes has said. 
They have asked no recognition from Congress, and these men are 
so far remote from the Government of this country, so far remote 
from the people of this country, that in the language of Senator Wil- 
liams, of Mississippi, they are in the back yard of this country. 

I want to tell you, Mr. Chairman, if I am allowed just one second 
to review one line of thought of IVIr. Bell's yesterday, that you men 
in Washington can not escape the problems of the Pacific Ocean. 
President Wheeler, known all over this country as a great educator, 
president of the University of California, has been over to Berlin 
giving lectures at the University of Berlin. He said that Emperor 
William of Germany, whose guest he was, made this significant 
remark to liim, "Dr. Wheeler, if we can preserve the peace of Europe 
for the 20 years next to come, I am not going to worry about the peace 
of Europe. There mil be too much need for the amalgamation of 
Europe against the one common problem in the Orient." 

Every schoolboy knows that when the great Napoleon, after he 
had thrashed almost every nation in Europe, w^as told to go in the 
direction of China, he said, "I am not going to wake up that sleeping 
giant." Gentlemen, you can not escape that. You men have got 
to look out for national issues; these national problems can not escape 
you, and they are becoming more imminent every day. The Japanese 
Government one year ago sent over the imperial commissioners of 
Japan, headed by Baron Sliibasawa, one time secretary of the treas- 
ury of the Japanese Government. They come over here. What for ? 
Because only by traveling, only by coming into contact, can they 
learn what manner of people we are. These people went through 
this country, and they have gone back to Japan to tell the people of 
Japan what manner of people we are, and about the industrial situation 
and commercial questions in this country. Again, this very summer, 
the associated chambers of commerce of the Pacific coast, at the 
direct invitation of the Imperial Government of China, went over to 
Cliina, and they have been throughout their entire trip the guests of 
the Imperial Government. And I want to say to you gentlemen 
who have never traveled in China that you have about as much 
chance of getting into social circles there as a colored gentleman has to 
get into the highest circles in New Orleans. Yet when those com- 
missioners went over to Cliina they were given the entree to the most 
exclusive circles, diplomatic and otherwise, under the auspices of 
the Imperial Government. And over there you have a great people — 
we have a few pigeon-chested politicians in California, just like you 
have everywhere else, who may minimize the im^portance of the 
development of the Cliinese in the future — there j^ou have a great 
people, whose trade is of immense value, whose future is the subject 
of consideration for the wisest statesmen; and, gentlemen, you have 
got to be prepared for the awakening of that great big giant. You 
have got to make the people of these United States — north, east, and 
south, as well as west — know that upon the awakening of that great 
big giant we will sufi'er immeasurably, not merely diplomatically, 
not merely from a military or naval standpoint, but what seems to 



PROPOSED PANAMA CAXAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 105 

be most material at this time and in this controversy, from a com- 
mercial standpoint, if we are unable to meet that competition. 

And now I want to say, Mr. Chairman, that the people of Cali- 
fornia are a patriotic people. We are a lono; way from Washing- 
ton, where a sight of the President of the United States is given to 
the people of California for about three seconds every three or four 
years. We do not know anytliing about the glamour of looking 
at the great battle fields of this Union. We have had to look from 
thousands of miles at the inspiration of the Revolution, and yet, 
gentlemen, we are a patriotic people. When that great battleship 
fleet came around the Horn, and came up from San Diego, passed 
Los Angeles and on to San Francisco, I want to tell you, gentlemen, 
that from one end of our State to the other there was such a wave 
of enthusiam that Mr. Theodore Roosevelt and Mr. William Howard 
Taft and Mr. William Jennings Bryan combined could not produce 
a tithe of the patriotism that filled that State from one end to the 
other as that great fleet swe])t by our shores. Why ? Because it 
was the first general recognition that we had had from this great 
Government; it was an indication to the people of California and to 
the people of the great West that we were upon the map of the 
Nation, and that we were entitled to that recognition. 

And I say to you, ^Nfr. Chairman, that in spite of the fatt that 
all this money has been raised, in spite of the fact that all these 
local questions may be involved, this fair should go to California 
for sentimental and patriotic reasons. I say to vou that the sons 
'and the grandsons and the daughters and granddaughters of those 
great California pioneers who went across the plains from every 
section of tliis great Union, want the inspiration of seeing upon the 
shores of the San Francisco Bay — that city risen up from its ashes 
in four years — they want to see upon that great shore such an expo- 
sition that they themselves will feel the enlightenment and the edu- 
cation and the inspiration of the patriotic fervor which they have 
had very little opportunity to cultivate, except as it blossoms, 
loyally and lustily, upon the soil of California. 

Therefore I say, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that we ought to 
put into this issue the question of national pride, the ciuestion that 
3'ou people from the South have got in such superabundance. We 
love to feel that you are one of us, that you have the same regard for 
us personally that we have for 3'ou, and that all the great success of 
your efforts to master the forces of nature are after all simply another 
triumph of our common race and common country. And we think 
that you ought to share with us the pride that we have in the great 
State of California, with all its natural wonders, that you stop this 
tide of immigration in the summer out to Pompeii and the Pyramids 
of Egypt and the glaciers of Norway, and that you come out here and 
see the Canyon de los Frijoles in New ^lexico, the ruins of a race of 
people not a trace of whom can be found anywhere on the pages of 
history, and all the other prehistoric wonders of our own land. We 
want you people to understand that there is not a place anywhere 
in the world any more beautiful or grand to be found than on the 
way from the Mississippi Valley to San Francisco, and we want 
to have a chance to welcome these men from New Orleans. It will 
be the opportunity of my life when I can take these gentlemen hj 
the hand out on the shores of California and tell them I am the 



106 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL, EXPOSITION^ 1915. 

happiest man on earth by reason of my opportunities. I don't 
want my friends to worry about the dining cars en route. I want to 
say— and I have not hved in Cahfornia all my life — that when I 
went to California first there was no such thing as dining cars and 
you had to wait until you came to an eating-house station where 
there was an opportunity to take dinner or supper. On one occasion 
I waited four hours on account of a freight wreck for my dinner. 
When I got there I knew what an appetite was. 

I felt like an Irishman some years ago who was walking to Cah- 
fornia. He was hungry and footsore. He came to a ranch house, 
and the good housewife said, ''You look hungry," and he said, ''I 
am very hungry." And so she got him something to eat. It was a 
dish of Irish stew. He stopped to say grace in thanksgiving for the 
meal he was about to enjoy. And as he was doing this on his knees, 
the little Irish terrier of the house came around. He likewise had an 
appetite, and when poor Mike lifted up his eyes to his meal there was 
the empty plate and the dog going around the corner of the house 
Hcking his chops. But he was pliilosophical, so he closed his eyes 
again and said, ''Thank God I have my appetite left, anyway." So 
it is a good thing to have an appetite left. And I want to say to 
my friends that if only the people of New Orleans have an appetite 
left after the fair is given to California, that if there is anything we 
can do to help them after the thoroughgoing hospitality and the 
thoroughgoing manliness they have shown, I want to say that Cali- 
fornia will help them. And after we have given them a thousand 
welcomes in Cahfornia, we will go from California, over the alkali 
plains, over the Great Staked Plain of Texas, and we will take the 
alkali dust into our nostrils and we will take a chance on the bayous 
of Louisiana, as long as we will have a chance to show them, the 
courtesy of going to New Orleans in return for their coming to San 
Francisco. [Applause.] 

Mr. Hayes. Our next speaker is Representative Knowland, of the 
third district of our State. 

STATEMENT OF HON. J. E. KNOWLAND, A REPRESENTATIVE 
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. 

Mr. Knowland. While I am a native of the great State of California 
I can certainly testify as to the charm of the Southland, because I fell 
under the spell of that fascinating southern accent of which our friend 
Mr. Scott so eloquently spoke, for from the proud old Dominion State 
of Virginia I took to California one of her fair daughters. FApplause.] 
I want to say that after spending a summer in the garden spot of the 
world, while she is yet loyal to her State, she has decided that the 
logical point is by the Golden Gate. I certainly can not be accused 
as a national legislator of failing to do my part toward eliminating the 
sectional lines. 

I shall confine myself to the time limit. We were each to consume 
10 minutes. My friend Hayes took 40, and my friend Scott half an 
hour. 

A number of the speakers urging the claims of New Orleans have 
expressed great concern because of the journey, "the long, toilsome 
journey across the continent." There are within this very room no 
doubt men old enough to remember those days when citizens of the 
United States, accompanied by the women and children of their 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 107 

families, journeyed across the great continent in ox teams, consuming 
months in the journey, in order that they might reach the Pacific 
shores. It is the call of the West. Those men, responding to that call, 
and imbued with that indomitable spirit which characterizes the 
American people, undertook the journey across the continent, which 
frequently consumed six months, and the trip had no horrors for them. 

And yet I heard one of the gentlemen who spoke, the governor of 
Mississippi, make a complaint because of the snowsheds that he was 
compelled to pass through in a luxurious Pullman, vestibuled train, 
with every accommodation; where he could obtain, if he desired it, no 
doubt, the Sazarac cocktail and other luxuries of which we have 
learned so much of late. 

Why, let me say to you that right within sight of those very snow- 
sheds in the year 1848 there perished 41 men, women, and children who 
had taken the long journey from Illinois across the continent and, 
reaching the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a few weeks too 
late, after the heavy snows had set in there perished because they were 
unable to find a path across the mountains. And yet we hear our 
friends complain of the great journey across the continent in a 
Pullman tram. 

The call of the West, to my mind, is as strong to-day as it was in 
those days of 1849, and we could not present any stronger evidence 
of this than to exhibit the map I hold in my hand and to which my 
friend, Mr. Bell, referred. This map was issued by the Bureau of 
the Census, and I want to bring home to you as forcibly as I can the 
fact that the great West is increasing more rapidly in population 
than any other section of this great Nation. The State of California 
has increased during the last decade 60.1 per cent. The State of 
Louisiana has increased but 19.9 per cent. The population of the 
State of Oregon has increased 62.7 per cent. The population of the 
State of Washington has increased 120.4 per cent, as against 19.9 
per cent for Louisiana. The population of Montana has increased 
54 per cent. The population of the little State of Nevada, repre- 
sented by our good friend Bartlett, has increased 93 per cent, as 
against 19.9 per cent for the State of Louisiana. It shows that the 
drift of population is westward. It shows that, at this ratio, in 1915 
you will have to rearrange your centers of population, and in that 
great western and Pacific coast territory you will find a population 
far in excess of the population as shown by the census figures of to-day. 

The pioneers who came to California did not all journey across the 
great continent. Many of them took passage from the Eastern States 
via the Isthmus of Panama, where they encountered hardships as 
great and where dangers lurked equal to those found in the trip across 
the continent. The statement was made the other day that it would 
take 21 days for a steamer to pass from Panama to San Francisco. 
It is true that the steamer service now is slow and that steamers stop 
at every little port on the way and consume 21 days. Let me call 
your attention to a very important fact, however, in the consideration 
of this question. When the Panama Canal is at last opened I be- 
lieve that thousands of American citizens will desire to go to the 
Isthmus and view that gigantic undertaking; and they are going to 
go in steamers from New York, from Boston, and from other points,, 
view the Panama Canal, pass through the locks of that great water- 
way, and then proceed to the city of San Francisco, take in the fair^ 



108 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

and return to their eastern homes. Many of you have stated that 
it woukl be a trip too long and consume time which the average 
American citizen could not afford to give. 

In the testimony the other day one of the gentlemen stated that 
they would have running from New Orleans to Colon 18-knot steam- 
ers by the time the Panama Canal was completed. I want to say in 
this connection that I understand there is now but one regular steam- 
ship line running between New Orleans and Colon. An 18-knot 
steamer could go from New York, pass through the Panama Canal, 
and reach the city of San Francisco in 12.2 days. That is not a very 
long trip, and is an opportunity of which many American citizens 
will certainly avail themselves. We are rapidly increasing the speed 
of our steamers. Now an 18 or 20 knot steamer is not considered 
very fast. Let us take a 20-knot steamer, for mstance. Everyone 
will admit that a steamer of that speed will be in all likelihood placed 
in the service for this exposition. A 20-knot steamer going from 
New York, passmg through the canal, would reach the city of San 
Francisco in less than 11 days. What a wonderful trip for any Amer- 
ican citizen to take, leavmg the eastern coast, going down to Colon, 
passing through the canal, viewing that great engineering project, 
going to Panama, then up the coast of California, and landing in San 
Francisco in less than 11 days, spending a few days at the fair in 
San Francisco, and then returning to his Eastern home ; and the time 
consumed would be no longer than any citizen could well take in 
order that he might see something of his country and enjoy rest that 
would be beneficial. The expense of such a trip would be but small. 
An exposition in California would be but a single incident to bring 
the people of the country to that locality. The whole State of Cali- 
fornia, as has been so eloquently stated, is an exposition of itself. 
There has never been an American citizen who has viewed the wonders 
of the great Yosemite Valley who has not proclaimed that he has been 
well repaid for the journey across the continent. 

This is but one of the attractions of California. On his way back 
to New York, or Chicago, he could take in the Yellowstone Park; he 
■could take in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and many other 
wonder spots of the world which every American citizen is ambitious 
to visit. 

I want to say in conclusion — because I have promised to keep 
within the time limit — that the exposition in California will be a 
financial success. The people of California and the Pacific coast have 
never yet failed in any undertaking. The spirit of success is in the 
air of California and of the West. Give us this exposition and we 
will give you an exposition that will be a credit to the nation and to 
the great Commonwealth of California. [Applause.] 

Mr. Hayes. I will now present Mr. A. W. Scott, jr., one of the 
directors of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition Co., of San 
Francisco. 

STATEMENT OF ME. A. W. SCOTT, JR. 

Mr. Scott. You have, I believe, some cause for gratitude toward 
the climate of Washington, because it has put a few of us Califor- 
nians into a condition so that we find it necessary to come here and 
to be brief and short and to the point. I am, unfortunately, in the 
same condition as Father McQuade. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915, 109 

Therefore, I have restricted myself to one specific topic. I shall 
try to restrict myself to that topic alone and I shall try to talk just 
as briefly as possible and in that way earn, I know, your personal 
gratitude. 

The subject that I want to impress upon you is the resource of 
the city of San Francisco, as opposed to that of New Orleans, for the 
purpose of this exposition. I have listened very patiently to the 
argument of our friends on the other side, and as one after the other 
has addressed this committee it has impressed me as very similar to 
the proposition of the old story that you all know of the lawyer 
giving advice to his son, who was about to try his first case. He 
said, ''Father, how shall I argue?" "My son, if you have the facts, 
talk on the facts; if you have the law, talk on the law." "But if I 
don't have either?" "Then talk around it; talk around it, my son." 

I have watched these arguments and I have seen absolutely noth- 
ing but "logical point," "logical point," "logical point;" "sentiment 
of the South;" "gentlemen, help us, we are splendid fellows;" 
"help us to get the fair." 

Now, we want to show you why we should get it; we want to show 
you how we can handle it if we do get it. A couple of daj^s ago one 
of our southern friends in a spirit of humor and with that good fellow- 
ship which I am happy to say has so far marked this discussion, 
turned to his friend Bell and said: "My friend seems to be taking 
this very seriously." It was amusing for a moment, but stop and 
think, gentlemen. Mr. Bell is taking this seriously, all of us Cali- 
fornians are taking this seriously, and every man, woman, and child 
in San Francisco is taking this seriously — and why ? Because we 
realize that the opening of the Panama Canal, the connecting of these 
two mighty oceans, the breaking through of that great dike which 
has barred the trade of the Orient from the world means not only an 
era of progress and of prosperity for the Pacific Coast and for San 
Francisco such as we can not estimate, but it marks a crisis, it 
marks a supreme epoch in the history of mankind on this earth. 
It marks the final struggle of the races, of civihzation against igno- 
rance; of progress of the West against the sloth of the East. We 
realize, perhaps, if you do not, what the opening of the canal means. 
We are not asking to celebrate the engineering feat so much as we are 
to celebrate what it means, what the development will mean to this 
Nation, what the situation of the Pacific coast with regard to China, 
Japan, and all the Orient, what the Panama Canal means to the 
people of the United States of America. 

That is what this exposition means to us. That is what the 
seriousness of this situation is. That is why we have thrown all of 
our hearts, all of our energ}^, all of our money, all of our ability, 
into the one desire to come to the Nation and ask of you to let us 
celebrate this — not the act itself, not the feat itself, but let us cele- 
brate what it means. 

Now, feeling it as keenly as we do, feeling that this is a great big 
national celebration of a great event in the history of the world, we 
believe it should be celebrated by the Nation in a manner commen- 
surate with the proportions of the event itself. This is no time for a 
Mardi Gras festival. This is no time for a local celebration. This 
is the time when the Nation, when America is going to point to the 
world and say "Come here and see what we have done." America 



110 PKOPOSED PANAMA OANAL EXPOSITIOlSr, 1915. 

wants to do this in a manner befitting the occasion, and with all 
modesty we submit that the city of San Francisco is better fitted, 
better supplied, better equipped to do this than any other place in 
this Nation at this time. 

I have brought up four or five views of the city of San Francisco. 
I want you to see what we have done. I want you to look at the 
view you have here of the ruined city of San Francisco in 1906, 15 
square miles absolutely devastated, the heart of our city absolutely 
swept bare by the flames, and not a vestige of a building left. That 
is where we were in April, 1906, when the world prophesied we never 
would recover, when many of our own people felt that 10 years or 20 
years would never put us back as we were. [Exhibiting here picture 
of devastated city.] 

Then, let me show what we have done, as we started to build. I 
want to show you the type of buildings of the city you have just 
looked at, to show j^ou what has grown up on that scene of ruin and 
ashes — show you modern reconconstructed San Francisco, and I want 
you to form an idea of the trials and troubles we have had. I want 
you to see our city as it is now and see what we have to show the 
nations of the world when they come there. 

This [indicating picture] is the heart of San Francisco. It shows 
some of our hotels and some of their accommodations. And as you 
gentlemen dehberate these things, I want to ask your chairman to 
act as the advocate of San Francisco, to tell you how he was treated 
there a year ago. I want him to tell you what manner of hostelries 
we liave there; what manner of attractions we have in our parks ; 
what manner of attractions we have in our stores and our buildings. 
We want you to know that when we say we have $17,500,000 to start 
with, that is the least of what we are offering in the way of an expo- 
sition. The least, mind you. Let me explain. 

The city of San Francisco has been rebuilt at an expense of 
$400,000,000. Our hotels are new. We have 1,250 of them— all 
equipped with the latest modern ideas in plumbing and in fittings, 
and we have 60,000 available hotel rooms to-day for a crowd that 
may come there. New Orleans speaks of their having 50,000 persons 
attend their ISiardi Gras, and 50,000, an immense crowd, to their con- 
clave. We had 480,000 people in San Francisco at our httle Portola 
celebration, a local affair purely. At that time the nations of the 
world sent their battleships, they sent their ambassadors, they sent 
their princes, and came there and celebrated with us. At a recent 
little local celebration, when we celebrated the admission of CaH- 
fornia, what we call our Native Son's Day, our admission, we had 
over 100,000 people in our city, and 32,000 of our people marched in 
our parade. 

Why, they have no conception or idea of what a California cele- 
bration is. Let me show you what happened on the streets of San 
Francisco on Christmas eve, a little snapshot of a small part of the 
crowd listening to the prima donna, Mme. Tettrazini, singing in our 
streets. Eighty thousand of our people gathered on the streets of 
San Francisco and listened to every note of that marvellous singer. 
That is the way we do things in San Francisco. 

You talk about your cars, your lights, your water-pumping plants 
in New Orleans. They are good; they may be fine; they are the 
development of a city, but they are childish compared with San 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION,, 1915. Ill 

T'rancisco. Your pumping plant has a capacity of 19,000,000 
gallons compared with ours of 35,000,000 a day. Your street-car 
service compared with ours; your hotels compared with ours; 
3^our lights compared with our wonderful illumination; your electric 
power compared with ours, are almost insignificant. There is no 
more comparison between the two cities for this exposition purpose 
than there is between the cit}' of San Francisco and the city of New 
York. We have recently bonded our city for $45,000^000 and 
again for $29,000,000 to improve our public buildings, our streets, 
our sewers, our water plants, and every manner of development of a 
city. Our State has voted $10,000,000 of bonds to improve our 
city water front; our State has voted $18,000,000 to make boulevards 
out of our highways. 

One of the attractions of San Francisco is that you can step into 
an automobile — and we have 45,000 in our State; more than in 
any other State except New York — step into an automobile and in 
a half hour — at the cheapest possible rates of hire — you can be 
speeding through the orchards and through the farms and the moun- 
tains or the hills. You can go by automobile to the big trees and 
to all the attractions that surround the city of San Francisco. In 
a few hours you can step into an automobile and slip down to the 
Valley of the Yosemite; you can go to the big trees; you can go to 
Del Monte; you can go across the bay and in an hour be on Mount 
Tamalpais. Gentlemen, there is no more comparison between the 
exposition we have before we begin to build one and the city of 
New Orleans than there is between black and white when you are 
looking for white. [Exhibiting panoramas of modern San Francisco.] 

One thing more. I want you to know more of the site we have. 
I want you to see the site that we are offered. We have a $15,000,000 
site offered to us by the city. Your chairman can tell you what we 
have in our Golden Gate Park. This [indicating large painting] 
represents the tip of our peninsula, the plat marked out is our famous 
Golden Gate Park, 1,000 acres, with its stadium and lakes, water- 
ways and sewers, water piped in every direction, everything we can 
ask for there, ready to be turned over to us by the city government, 
if we so elect, at 48 hours' notice, representing an expenditure in 
improvement alone of over $15,000,000. 

That is the starter before we begin with our $17,500,000 if you 
please, and then the city of New Orleans pretends and has the effront- 
ery to say to you that they have anything similar to that to offer for 
an exposition. They can not begin with that, they can not continue. 
They have neither the attractions of our city nor the accommo- 
dations of our city; look at the immense wealth of our State and city 
which we have to pour into this exposition, compare with New Orleans, 
and then see if there is any comparison between the cities. 

And what do we ask? Absolutely nothing but the courtesy of 
the United States, the honor of being designated the national host 
on this occasion. Mr. Hayes, our Congressman, has just pledged 
you his word that we shall ask for not one dollar, now or hereafter, 
and when we say that, gentlemen, we are business men and we mean 
business. We mean just what we say. We are not talking general- 
ities; we are not talking about 

The Chairman (interrupting). Mr. Scott, you expect to have a 
Government exhibit there, do 3'ou not ? 



112 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Mr. Scott. I will answer that in this way: As far as any Govern- 
ment exhibit made by the National Government by funds out of 
the National Treasury is concerned, San Francisco pledges herself 
now not to ask for one dollar from the National Government. If 
we have national exhibits, those exhibits will be made by the inde- 
pendent States of the United States, and many of them have signi- 
fied their intention of coming there, but we say now and we will say 
at all times, as Congressman Hayes has said before me, that we shall 
not ask the United States for one dollar to install an exhibit or for 
any other purpose, and I wdsh to be absolutely clear and unmistaken 
on that subject. 

Mr. Langley. The National Government will pay for its own 
exhibit; of course, you do not expect the State of California to do 
that ? 

Mr. Scott. I do not know what the National Government may 
want to do. But I do not want, by any imphcation or iniiuendo or 
by any misunderstanding, to be put into the position of shding over 
this thing. Somebody has said, ''They will come back later and 
say we want the Government to do so and so." If it were not for a 
feehng that it would be a presumption on our part, we would come 
to you as Congressmen and would say, we would be delighted to build a 
government building and to pay for the expense of installing a Gov- 
ernment exhibit, because, gentlemen, the United States Govern- 
ment is sick and tired of expositions. Congress is sick and tired of 
appropriations for them. They have made them every year and 
they are disgusted with them, and we do not want one cent now or 
in the future. 

Mr. Nelson. What do you expect, Mr. Scott, the Government 
will do in this matter? 

Mr. Scott. As far as their representation, we have been to the 
State Department. We stated that we were even willing to pay for 
the expense of a Government representation, a Government com- 
mission, if necessary. We have offered to put aside enough for the 
entertainment purposes by which that commission shall come out 
there and officially entertain the representatives of the world, if the 
State Department considered it a diplomatic necessity. 

The Chairman. Mr. Scott, do you believe it would comport with 
the dignity of this country to invite foreign powers to have an 
exhibit at an exposition and not have its own exhibit there paid for 
by the Government ? 

Mr. Scott. That depends entirely on what you mean by a Govern- 
ment exhibit. 

The Chairman. Something like they had at Chicago, or St. Louis, 
or Jamestown, or any other international exposition. 

Mr. Scott. Mr. Bell who has led our argument assiues me that 
it would be more fitting for Mr. Kahn, who is the official representa- 
tive of our community, to answer that particular topic. Mr. Kahn 
has already made his preparation and lined up his thought to cover 
fully and comprehensively this subject and I think it better for me 
to restrict myself to the particular topic that I have taken up and 
cover that. I do not want to anticipate Mr. Kahn, who is the proper 
party to discuss this on our behalf. 

I hope, though, that we will get that matter absolutely thrashed 
out before this committee, because it is something that San Francisco 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 113 

desires to be clearly understood upon. There has been a suggestion 
made at various times that we are jockeying and we want to be 
understood clearly and definitely and just as straight as one man 
can talk to another, we want to talk good, straight American business 
on this matter of not wanting any appropriation. 

Now, I have but one word more to say. We have heard much, 
from our southern friends about the hospitality of the South. There 
has been nothing that I have admired more than the courteous^ 
chivalrous, generous treatment that we have received from our 
New Orleans friends. I can conceive of nothing more attractive 
than going to the city of New Orleans to see some of our friends and 
be entertained in that soft, delightful atmosphere, and lying in a 
hammock at rest, and having one of their boys shake for a half hour, 
or 15 minutes, whatever it may be, one of those delicious concoc- 
tions with which they have been regaling all of us lately, and forget 
that the world moves. That is delightful for one stranger, but when 
you begin to figure on a hundred strangers or a thousand or ten 
thousand or one hundred thousand, great, big, modern hotels are 
better. 

We are not putting these things up to you — exhibiting these beau- 
tiful pictures of disaster in our city and our recovery — to create 
sympathy. We absolutely disclaim any appeal to such an argument. 
We are putting it to you purely as a business talk. We are putting 
it to you to show 3^ou what we have done, to convince you, to ask jou 
to take this frame of mind: That a people that can do this thmg, 
that can recover from a calamity like this, that can come back and 
with a laugh build up a great city of that kind, the most beautiful 
and modern city of the world, out of the ashes of their homes, that 
can do this in four years, is a people that deserve and have shown 
themselves entitled to the honor they ask, the simple courtesy that 
they ask for. They are a people that certainly have demonstrated 
to the Government of the United States that they are capable more 
than any other of handling a great exposition; have shown their 
responsibility to handle the work that is necessary to properly cele- 
brate the greatest American achievement. I thank you, gentlemen. 
[Applause.] 

Mr. Hayes. Our last speaker this morning will be Representative 
McKinlay, of the second district of California. 

STATEMENT OF HON. DUNCAN E. M'KINLAY, A REPRESENTA- 
TIVE FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. 

Mr. McKiNLAY. Since the subject of the rival merits of San Fran- 
cisco and New Orleans have been so thoroughly gone over I will not 
attempt to do any more than elaborate and advance one or two 
features in connection with the subject. In the beginning I will say 
that if this controversy, or this contention, were being carried on 
10 to 15 years ago, I, for one, would be inclined to concede to our 
rival city of New Orleans the right to the exposition, because at that 
time, 10 or 15 years ago, perhaps they would have been better situ- 
ated from the standpoint of the world's trade from a geographical 
standpoint than San Francisco; but within the last decade and a half 
the theater of the world's events has been changed. There has been 

73172—11 8 



114 PEOFOSED PANAMA OANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

a transformation. The raising of our flag over the Hawaiian Islands 
first begun to proj ect our country and our diplomacy and our nation- 
ality out into the countries of Asia. Then came the acquisition of 
the Philippine Islands by the Battle of Manila Bay, and, whether we 
would or no, as a Nation our flag was carried 7,000 miles across the 
ocean and planted over the islands of the Philippines. 

This brought the West directly into the very' center of the world's 
activities; certainly into the center of American activity. Thirteen 
years ago we had only one railroad penetrating California, one great 
transcontinental line; thousands of miles of desert had to be crossed 
over one railroad. Now we have four railroads, great transconti- 
nental systems, entering California alone. 

The operations in the Philippine Islands, the military and other 
operations, were conducted through the port of San Francisco, and 
just at this particular time Alaska began to develop and unfold and 
throw her resources into the American Nation. Now, it is said that 
in the last 13 or 14 years the wealth of the United States has advanced 
from $65,000,000,000 to $125,000,000,000, and certainly one-half of 
that has been because of the development, of the great West and the 
Pacific coast, particularly of the coasts to the north and up Alaska. 

Seward purchased Alaska in 1867; he became the object of derision all 
over the world for having purchased a fog bank and an iceberg for 
$7,200,000 and a few old ships, and yet, within the last 10 years 
Alaska has turned out more than $300,000,000 worth of material 
wealth and is turning it out at the rate of $50,000,000 a year. 

Our operations along the Pacific coast have transformed the Pacific 
Ocean, so far as America is concerned, from something that was of 
little value to us, something that was unknown, into the great theater 
of trade and commerce. The Atlantic has been exploited and New 
Orleans has participated in that exploitation, for years. For over a 
century she has been in contact with Europe. 

Out across the Pacific are new lands, so far as we are concerned 
unknown lands, and all of them are yet to be exploited by the agents 
of western trade and commerce, and the United States is rapidly 
becoming the arbiter and the dominant influence in the affairs of the 
Asiatic continent. This condition was foretold by Humboldt in the 
year 1800, when traveling and exploring up and down the coast of 
Central America. He said — 

Some day the Pacific Ocean will be the great theater of events. 

And he said further — 

The little Republic up toward the north will perhaps become the dominating 
influence in Asia. 

This prophecy was reiterated by Seward in 1867. That day is at 
hand, gentlemen. San Francisco 1 5 years ago was perhaps the back 
door of the United States. San Francisco was perhaps of little sig- 
nificance. Our magnificent harbor and bay of San Francisco, so com- 
modious as to be able to accommodate the combined navies of the 
world, was an unknown quantity to a great part of the population of 
the United States. 

What is the situation to-day? The crossing of the continent by 
the railroads has forced San Francisco out, as it were, into the most 
prominent position of any city of the American Nation facing toward 
Asia. It is through the Golden Gate that the great bulk of Asiatic 
trade must ebb and flow. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, I'Jl.j. 115 

So it has been our policy, in harmony with our ideas of inter- 
national comity and peace, ever since the war between China and 
Japan, to conciliate the Asiatic nations. After the Japanese w^re 
successful over the Chinese and secured rights of suzerainty over 
Korea in 1905 and 1906, the nations of Europe, headed by Russia, 
drove Japan back within her islands and took from her the fruits of 
her victory. The United States was the only nation that refrained 
from joining in that spoliation. All the nations of Europe were 
parties to that plunder, and that was the cause of the great Russo- 
Japanese War. 

The Japanese people were compelled to have territory to receive 
their overflowing population. The islands of Japan, 600 in number, 
contain 140,000 square miles, while the State of California alone, 
having a length of about 800 miles as the crow flies, contains 158,000 
square miles — 18,000 square miles more than Japan. And yet to-day 
on those islands of Japan there are 50,000,000 people, increasing at 
the rate of a million a year. Therefore the policy of Japan has been 
to secure territory on the coast of Asia. They resurrected an old 
right which they claimed to have had in Korea, a right of suzerainty, 
so they had a war with China to establish this right, but the nations 
of Europe drove them back and they were compelled to find a place 
to colonize and receive the overflow of their population. The policy 
of Japan was to secure the Kingdom of Korea, 80,000 square miles 
in extent, a fine, a beautiful land, and so Japan is pushmg on and 
into the coasts of Asia. 

Our policy was to remain neutral, and Japan to-day, despite the 
theoiy which is current in some parts of the United States, despite 
the idea that there is friction between the two countries, I believe 
that Japan to-day desires the friendship of the United States more 
than any other nation in this world. All who have studied the 
progress of years in Asia must know that Russia is only held tem- 
porarily in her progress toward the sea. They have rebuilt their 
railway in Siberia. The great victory of Japan over Russia has only 
halted for a time the progress of that nation. ^Vhen the time comes 
the Russian armies will advance again and will be met by the armies 
of Japan, and Japan needs the friendship and the assistance of the 
United States. And I do not believe for one moment — and this 
opinion is based upon consultation with some of our best Army and 
naval officers and those who have traveled through Asia — that Japan 
will fail to do everything on earth to preserve international comity 
and peace between our country and hers, no matter if some little 
friction occurs on the Pacific coast in regulating the coming of 
Asiatic labor. 

The exclusion of Asiatic labor will never bring war between Japan 
and America. 

The trade of Asia has grown to be a very important factor in the 
world's economy, and it has just now become necessary for the United 
States to study the ebb and flow of commerce and trade of the world. 
We have paid little attention to that as a nation up to now. Our 
own great consumptive capacity as a countrj'', our capacity to absorb 
the output of our own fields and factories and mines, has been nearly 
sufficient. We have absorbed nearly all we produce. But during the 
last five years the expansion and the development of our great indus- 
trial system has made it necessary for our country now to reach out 
and secure foreign markets for our products without any question. 



116 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITTON, 1915. 

Our exports last year amounted to about $1,700,000,000; our 
imports $1,300,000,000. Last year the shops and mills and factories 
of the United States turned out in manufactured output about sixteen 
billion dollars' worth of manufactured products, our farms in the 
neighborhood of nine bilhons, our forests and fields six or seven 
billions more. The output of material wealth in the United States 
last year was close to thirty bilhon dollars, one-third of the output of 
the world's wealth, and we can no longer market it all at home. 

We have to send our agents out into the world to find foreign 
markets. Can we find them in Europe? Not at all. Every 
European nation is developed to the utmost, and we find from Europe 
that it is useless to send our agents of diplomacy to ask for more trade. 
Europe has its settled lines of trade with us and we with them. 

But there is the great field of the Orient. Cliina, with 450,000,000 
people, is shaking off the sloth and the lassitude and the indiffer- 
enoe to progress and the extreme conservatism of 6,000 years. She 
is beginning to open up her mines, her forests, to build her own ships; 
she is beginning to trade with the world. 

Our pohcy toward China has been one of conciliation and of inter- 
national comity. We were the one nation that stood against spolia- 
tion at the time of the Boxer uprising, and so has been our attitude 
toward India. The whole course of our diplomatic pohcy toward 
Asia has been one calculated to promote trade and commerce and to 
facilitate the exchange of products between those great lands and ours. 

Now, gentlemen, there are 1,500,000,000 people in the world. 
There are 350,000,000 in Europe, divided up into 75 nations, king- 
doms, and principalities. In Asia, this unexploited part of the world 
so far as we are concerned, there are to-day 800,000,000 people, more 
than half the people of the world. There are 450,000,000 in China, 
200,000,000 in India, 50,000,000 in Japan, and some more scattered 
throughout the smaller countries of Asia. 

The policy of the United States is to reach out and lay the founda- 
tions of future trade and commerce. What better agency could be 
used for this purpose than for the opening in San Francisco of a great 
international fair, so that the nations of Asia in close proximity to 
us — in closer proximity to us than any other part of the United 
States — may bring to us their wares and exhibit them and thus 
become acquainted with our American civilization ? 

Last year the trade of Asia approximated $1,500,000,000. The 
United States secured less than one hundred million of it. We have 
been backward. Our merchants have not sent their agents out. 
Our Department of State has been backward. I was in Shanghai 
five years ago, and I visited the consulates there. We found that the 
consulate of Great Britain had about 25 attaches. Some of these 
attaches went up through the interior of China, back of Shanghai. 
It was their business to find out and study the commerce and ideas 
of the trading Chinese and make reports, and the reports are sent to 
the merchants of England. The Germans had 30; the Japanese 65; 
France about 25. But we had to take a guide to find the United 
States consulate, and we would not have found it then if it had not 
been for the American flag. And the consul told us that he did not 
even have a typewriter to do his work, and if he wanted to write a 
report he had to do it himself. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 117 

These things are now changed. The State Department is taking 
cognizance of such matters, and they are sending their commercial 
agents tliroughout Asia, because that is the land where we expect to 
seciu-e trade and commerce. We expect to bring America close to 
Asia, show our resources to them, and, by maintaining friendly 
relations, to secure some portion of that trade which is so necessary 
for the continuation of prosperity in this country. Our industrial 
situation here is developing, and every day it grows greater, and we 
must secure these foreign markets or have idle workers at home. 

There is no city in the world situated so advantageousl}^ to secure 
a portion of the trade of Asia as the city of San Francisco. Those 
who know the habits of the Chinese and the Japanese know that they 
reluctantly trade or do business with those likely to become enemies. 
Japan has been at swords' points with several of the European nations, 
and China with many of them. They are naturally anxious to trade 
with the United States and all they need is the opportunity. Without 
going further into this, I beheve that if the committee will look at 
this great question from the broad standpoint of the greatest good 
to the greatest number of people of this Nation, that which will be 
the best for the United States, they will give this, the greatest exhi- 
bition ever given to the world, to San Francisco. It will impress the 
people of Asia with the fact that our country is the great industrial 
country of the earth, and will be able to furnish the goods and the 
commodities their peoples desire to buy. It seems to me this is the 
agency that ought to be employed, and it is an opportunity that 
should not lightly be set aside because of sentiment or because we 
might be able by going to New Orleans to travel a little more cheaply, 
or because a greater number of the American people might visit 
that exhibition. This is not to be a county fair or a State fair. It 
is to be an international fair. As the president of our great Cali- 
fornia university says: 

The world has been circling and at last the civilization of America penetrates the 
civilization of Asia. Six or eight thousand years ago, if history is to be believed, the 
populations of the world came forth from the great mountains and streams of Asia 
and some of those streams have flowed toward the east, and it seems as if the civiliza- 
-tions established along the coasts of Asia congealed thousands of years ago. Other 
streams flowed toward the west and became enterprising nations and built up Europe, 
and America was colonized and the great plains were crossed and the plateaus sur- 
mounted and the Divide was passed, the Pacific coast was established and became 
the great western part of the American Nation. 

Now, we have gone over into the Philippines. We do not know how 
long we will remain there, but the Philippine territory is becoming 
valuable. Last year their consumption of products amounted to 
$40,000,000. Up to two years ago we secured only S5,000,000 of 
that. Last year our trade jumped to S15,000,000. 

So, out in the Asiatic countries, out in those nations bordering the 
Pacific, we must look for the real expansion and the real progress of 
industrial and commercial America. I do not believe that for a long 
time America will be halted. I believe we will find some means to 
restore our merchant marine, and that we will get our share of the 
trade of the Orient, and so I believe that the construction of this fair 
in San Francisco will be one of the great agencies that will give to 
California and the city of San Francisco, and the people of America, 
that thing most desired, markets in the Asiatic lands and through- 



118 PKOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

out the world that will be of lastmg benefit to our Nation and to our 
people. [Applause.] 

Mr. Hayes. We are greatly indebted to the good nature and pa- 
tience of this committee, and I very much regret to announce that 
Mr. Kahn is ill in bed to-day, and not able to appear before you, and 
I ask that he may be heard on Monday, if possible. 

The Chairman. As I understand it, this concludes the hearing on 
behalf of both cities, with the exception of the concluding arguments 
by Mr. Kahn and Gov. Sanders. The committee will then meet on 
Monday morning promptly at 10 o'clock. 

Mr. Hayes. Mr. Bartlett desired to say a word, and he has been 
obliged to go, and if he could have an opportunity to put in five min- 
utes or so on Monday it will be appreciated. 

The Chairman. That will be all right. The committee will now 
stand adjourned until Monday morning at 10 o'clock. 

(Thereupon, at 12 o'clock and 35 minutes, p. m. the committee 
adjourned until Monday, January 16, 1911). 



Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions, 

Monday, January 16, 1911. 
The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., Hon. William A. Eodenberg 
(chairman) presiding. 

The Chairman. The committee will be in order. The Chair under- 
stood from Mr. Hayes on Saturday that Congressman Bartlett, of 
Nevada, wanted to make a short statement preceding the talk of Mr. 
Kahn. 

Mr. Kahn. That is correct. 

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE A. BARTLETT, A REPRESENTATIVE 
FROM THE STATE OF NEVADA. 

Mr. Bartlett. Mr. Chairman, gentlemen of the committee, and our 
good friends from New Orleans : This discussion has proceeded about 
a week now. While I am a little out of the circle of the two contend- 
ing groups in this chamber, I have been deeply impressed with one 
feature of this discussion. Gen. Estopinal, with quiet, confident 
dignity, summoned the angel of eloquence into this chamber, and the 
angel promptly floated in and touched the lips of Louisiana's distin- 
guished governor, and from that moment until now there has been a 
spirit of friendly confidence in each man's position that proves a 
splendid loyalty to one's own city. It is good to see these gentlemen 
so earnest and sincere on both sides. I am outside of both cities, 
outside of both States, but I come from one of the Western States, 
and, therefore, can speak with a western voice and stand for our 
western city, to which we give the same loyalty, the same love that 
obtains in the Southland. This should not be strange to the folks 
down South, because in the western blood there flows also the blood 
of the Southland. We have that, and we, too, have something of the 
same character of loyalty. But aside from the sentimental consid- 
erations that prompt the folks of the South for New Orleans, that 
prompt the people of the West for San Francisco, there is another 
question to be considered which I deem of especial importance. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 119 

The gentlemen from New Orleans have a map, which I see over 
yonder, a map of our country. If you gentlemen of the committee 
will look but for a moment you will observe that two-thirds of the 
territory lies westward from the Father of Waters. In that vast 
territory is an undeveloped region, a region able to care for millions 
of people, and yet the magazine known as The Logical Point has the 
recklessness to state that our population in this country has become, 
or will soon become, so congested that we must look southward for 
an outlet. Under the reclamation policy of this Government there 
is now being developed the agricultural resources of that great West . 
We have lands that need cultivation. They offer golden opportunities 
to a people of courage and enterprise. Over in Senator Poindexter's 
country and the Yakima country are lands that produce the finest 
fruits and grains on earth. We have irrigation projects down in 
the Salt River country, in the Truckee-Carson project in my State, 
in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico 
there are projects calling simply for people to come and make homes; 
and God knows there are innumerable people in congested sections 
of the East that need homes. 

Figures are a little tiresome and I have tried to eliminate them 
from my remarks; but, my friends, do you know that one of those 
projects, and that is the Salt River project, where they have a great 
dam building or about completed which will back up enough water 
to make a canal from Chicago 2,400 miles out to San Francisco, 
300 feet wide, as wide as the Panama Canal itself. Talk about 
Chicago down to the Gulf, 900 miles, 14 feet deep! You can build 
a canal from Chicago to San Francisco, 2,400 miles, 300 feet wide, 
19 feet deep with the water in one reclamation project. 

What does that do ? That water opens up for cultivation and the 
production of crops 140,000 acres and makes homes for God knows 
now many people, depending upon the units into which it may be cut 
for entry. That is only one or the largest projects. In the greatest 
project I referred to a few moments ago, the one up in Wasliington, 
anci in all of these projects, are thousands of acres awaiting cultiva- 
tion, awaiting homes, awaiting the building of farms, and awaiting 
the building of cities, the building up of new industries, the extension 
of new railroads, suppl3"ing a njarket for the eastern manufacturer 
until our own shall be established out in that western desert, where 
the alkali dust so disturbs the gentleman from New Orleans. I would 
like to take him out into Nevada now. I do not know when he made 
his trip, but if he would come out there now and cross that desert, 
where the alkali disturbs his sensitive nostrils so much, he would find 
that in the Truckee-Carson project, where we have stored and util- 
ized and properly distributed the waters from the Truckee and Carson 
Rivers and Lake Tahoe, we have builded farms where all the crops 
can be grown that can be grown in any part of the territory of the 
United States; where that alkali has been watered and that virgin 
soil cultivated and made productive by the industry and energy of 
our people. This Congress owes it to that western land to aid and 
continue to aid in its development. The holding of this exposition 
in San Francisco would prove a factor of prime importance in causing 
travel to the West. The people who would come, if they did not 
remain, would go away to discuss and talk about it, and it would 
bring to that western land the people whom it needs. 



120 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

It has been established here that the attendance of the Seattle 
and Portland fairs was far in excess of any fair held in the South. 
Evidently the course of the successful exposition is westward. 
The other points in this argument have been so fully discussed and 
reiterated that I have been barred from the privilege of saying as 
much as I would like to say about San Francisco itself. Enough 
that we of the West love it for the genius, enterprise, and magnificent 
courage of its people, and, knowing this, have reason for our faith 
in her fidfillment of the expectations of the American people in the 
character of exposition she will give -to the world. God Almighty 
started this exposition business some millions of years ago and has 
builded in that western country a thousand structures of His own 
that have attracted the interest of travelers and scientists for years 
and j^ears. Her tall mountains, which some genius of New Orleans 
has pictured on a map, a relief map that I have seen somewhere in 
town — I think it was Shoomaker's, where I occasionally go to get 
a glass of water — that relief map shows a beautiful flat territory in 
the Mississippi Valley and eastward, and to the west he has a bunch 
of mountains built there with no valleys between them. I reckon 
he thinks we are a herd of goats out there and trip lightly from peak 
to peak in visits to our neighbors. I would like to take him up on 
top of one of those mountains and tell him that his feet stand upon 
mountains that in California and Nevada have two thousand millions 
of virgin wealth — actual money added to the channels of trade and 
commerce, which has made the wheels of industry spin throughout 
the land. 

Gentlemen of the committee, I thank you very much indeed for 
your kind courtesy in permitting me to say a few words in my indorse- 
ment of San Francisco. I should like to add to my remarks, to go 
into the hearings which will be printed for the information of the 
House, an article written a few months ago by Mr. Blanchard, 
statistician of the Heclamation Service, relative to various reclama- 
tion projects in the West, which article was printed in the National 
Geographic Magazine. Will that right be granted? 

The Chairman. That right will be granted; yes. 

The Spirit or the West. 

THE WONDERFUL AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT SINCE THE DAWN OP IRRIGATION. 
[By C. J. Blanchard, United States Reclamation Service.] 

The spirit of the West is optimism and progress. It is the spirit that fired the hearts 
of our forefathers who erected in the primeval forests of New England the super- 
structure of the greatest Nation on earth. It is the optimism and faith which imbued 
their descendants who carved an agricultural empire of imparalleled richness from 
the Mississippi Valley. 

Once a wilderness so unpromising that it evoked derision in the halls of Congress, 
the West has become to-day the land of fortune and opportunity. In this land of 
boundless distances the altitude is stimulating, the air is a tonic, giving health to the 
infirm and courage to those who have failed elsewhere. Its constant sunshine encour- 
ages optimism and cheerfulness. The glories of its opal-tinted dawns, the indescrib- 
able beauty of its sunsets, and the nameless witchery of its twilight softly melting 
into night are the work of a divine painter. 

There is mental and spiiitual uj^lift in its mountains, whose summits are in regions 
of perpetual snow. Its sapphire lakes, excelling in beauty those of Switzerland, open 
up a wondrous field of interest and pleasure to the sight-seer and those in search 
of rest and recreation. The monarchs of its forests cast their shadows on the earth 
before the coming of the gentle Nazarene. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 121 

Its canyons, sculptured during uncounted centuries by wind and wave, are un- 
rivaled in their wonderful and varied coloring and in their awe-inspiring depths. 

Its deserts, in vastness of area, in potential wealth of soil and climate, and in rivers 
of constant supply, are sleeping empires awaiting exploitation and development. 
Here nature offers to every man his birthright — a wide sky, the sunshine, the wind, 
and a sure reward for intelligent effort. Here things are writ in characters too vast 
for human pen. 

It is our own land of mystery and enchantment, of crumbling ruins, and of lost 
races which have vanished utterly. 

On the lofty mesas of the painted desert are "tribes whose ceremonies bridge the 
years between ages of stone and steam " living antique lives in a modern day. Their 
houses are fortresses erected a hundred years before Columbus sailed the unknown 
western seas. On theii- walls the watchman still holds vigil, and in their kivas 
strangely clad priests recite their prayers, which may antedate fhoseof our own religion. 

The late Gov. John A. Johnson well said the West symbolizes "homes for the 
homeless; food for the hungry; work for the unemployed; land for the landless; gold 
for the penniless; freedom for the enslaved; adventure for the restless; dangers for 
the brave; an unknown world to conquer, and room for all.'' 

Irrigation has wrought its miracle, and 13,000,000 acres reclaimed are annually 
producing harvests valued at more than $250,000,000 and supporting in homes of 
their own more than 300,000 families. The wealth of that portion of the country 
which great statesmen in Webster's day were wont to declare worthless is greater 
now than that of the entire Nation in 1860. 

In the swift march of national events during the past decade the development of 
the West has focussed the attention of the world. It fiu'uishes one of the most inspir- 
ing pages in the annals of om* commonwealth. It is a story of progress and human 
achievement — a battle with natm'e in her sternest and most forbidding aspect. 

Futme writers will record the irrigation movement as an epoch in oiu* history the 
far-reaching influence of which overshadowed in importance any other progressive 
movement since the opening to settlement of the Mississippi Valley. The reclama- 
tion of vast areas of om* arid and semiarid regions, which is being promoted by the 
Federal Government and by large corporations working in conjunction with several 
States, is of profound economic importance to the Nation. 

The additional opportunities thus created for homemakers are already serving to 
check the undesirable efflux of the country people to the city. Millions of acres of 
desert, unleached by rain and storing in its bosom the fertility gathered there by 
centuries of washings from hills and mountains, are being quickened by life-giving 
waters. 

Cities, populous and great, have sprung up; rm-al communities, attractive and 
properous, broad vistas of fertile fields, and blossoming orchards whose yields are 
prolific beyond comparison, replace the wastes of sand and sagebrush. 

Economic forces are at work to-day in the country, and particularly in the arid 
West, which are gradually but surely shaping om* agricultm-al development along 
new lines. In many parts of the irrigated country agricultm-e now occupies a posi- 
tion of greater dignity among the vocations than ever before. Its place among the 
scientific professions is now recognized and it is calling more strongly every day for 
the best talent and brains the Nation affords. 

Agriculture in the desert is intensive and calls for and encoiuages a higher degree 
of intelligence than is found in humid regions. Farms are small and settlements are 
compact. There is constant interchange of ideas among the farmers, whose rela- 
tions become intimate in the transaction of daily business. 

Individualism, which is a characteristic of the farming regions of the East, as well 
as provincialism, are less known in the irrigated sections. The irrigation canal is 
the connecting link which binds the community together. 

This gi-eat public utility is controlled and operated for the common benefit. Coop- 
erative management of the irrigation system is a fundamental principle on each of 
the Government projects. The inevitable tendency of such management has been 
cooperative organization, which to-day is extended to all the farmers' activities — 
individual, educational, and social. 

Gradually there has grown up a desire for betterment of conditions, and with the 
coming of ample financial returns there is evidence of a desire to improve the character 
of home life. The country is becoming citified, and life on the irrigated farm is 
growing attractive. The isolation and loneliness of farm life where farm homes are 
far apart are eliminated. 

Farm life and its duties under these conditions are regulated to-day very much the 
same as the man of business orders his affairs. The old haphazard methods of agri- 
culture have no place here, where every acre must be made to give its maximum 



122 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

yield and where the crop itself is carefully considered with regard to markets and 
cost of production. 

There are to-day in the irrigated West a dozen or more rural communities which 
in artistic and beautiful homes or in the nearly ideal conditions of home life enjoyed 
by the people, have no rivals in the East. 

As new communities rise, provision is made at once for the educational and reli- 
gious needs of the people. The centralized graded school is growing in popularity 
and is being established in many sections. The children are carried to and from the 
school in carriages. Elementary agriculture is being taught and an effort is being 
made to inculcate in the child a love of nature and a respect for life in the country. 

The daily newspaper keeps the farmer in touch with the outside world and its 
markets; the circulating library introduces the best literature into his home; the trol- 
ley lines now being extended tlii-ough many irrigated valleys bring the city to his 
very door. 

Throughout the arid West there is evidence of an orderly arrangement of detail 
and a planning of duties which in time will give us office hours on the farm. When 
crops are intelligently diversified there is little of the back-breaking heart-discour- 
aging work of the old-time one-crop farm. Crops ripen and are harvested at different 
intervals, giving the farmer and his family ample time without crowding. Where 
harvests are sure and there is no interference by reason of rain, the farmer can appor- 
tion his time and his work with some degree of accuracy. 

It is remarked everywhere in the West that the mental attitude of the farmer has 
undergone a pronounced change. The factors of better roads, rm-al delivery, tele- 
phones, trolley lines, cooperation, and frequent association with neighbors are pri- 
marily responsible. 

For several years nearly all professions, from bootblacks in Butte to steeple climbers 
in New York, have been organizing except farming. Acting alone, the farmer has 
been for years at the mercy of the commission man or the elevator company. 

In the "irrigated valleys of the West to-day there have been perfected a number of 
strong and successful business organizations for handling special crops. Fruit growers' 
associations in several districts are marketing crops each yeai' valued at millions of 
dollars and, largely as a result of up-to-date methods, have seciued control of the best 
markets of the world for their products. 

The success of these organizations, the opportunities they offer for first-class business 
ability, as well as the assurance of profits in agriculture, have excited widespread 
interest among many city-bred people, and have drawn thousands back to the country 
who could never have been induced to leave the city to take up the old system of 
farming. 

The agricultural colleges report among their students an increasing nurnber of city- 
bred youths who are perfecting themselves in the advanced lines of agriculture and 
horticultiu-e ]jreparatory to taking up the profession of farming. 

The Reclamation Service began its work in 1902 on the passage of the reclama- 
tion act. The first contract was let in September of the next year, and on June 17, 
1905, an important project in Nevada was formally opened. 

• GIGANTIC TASKS ACCOMPLISHED IN FIVE YEARS. 

Progress has been rapid and the activities of the bureau have been extended to 26 
or more projects, which to date have involved the expenditure of $60,000,000. In 
the seven and one-half years of its work the service has built 4,215 miles of canal. 
Placed end to end, these canals would reach from Washington to San Francisco and 
back to New Orleans. Several of these canals carry whole rivers. 

It has excavated 17 miles of tunnels. 

Before the end of the year it will have completed four of the highest dams in the 
world. Its excavations of rock and earth amount to the enormous total of 60,000,000 
cubic yards. 

Its roads have a total length of 417 miles; telephones, 1,127 miles; levees, 70 miles. 

It has purchased 915,751 barrels of cement and has manufactured in its own mill 
340,000 barrels. As a result of its work water is available for 750,000 acres on 13,000 
farms. 

The gross value of crops produced on the lands irrigated by the Government projects 
in 1910 was §14,038,000. As a result of the work of the Government, it is estimated 
that land values have increased more than $105,800,000. 

The Ronlamalion Service is entering 1910 with money and plans for completing 
most of its larger and unfinished masonry structures, and with about three-quarters 
of a million of acres of arid land under irrigation. 

It will finish this year the great Roosevelt Dam in Arizona, one of the most massive 
in the world. It has completed the Shoshone Dam, in northern Wyoming, the highest 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 123 

structure of its kind ever built; the Pathfinder Dam, in southern Wyoming; and the 
Laguna Dam, in Arizona. It will for the first time utilize the Gunnison Tunnel, whose 
completion was celebrated by President Taft last summer. 

The funds available for construction are somewhat less than in previous years, and 
the organization, which is very elastic, has been cut down to fit rediiced expenditures. 
About 50 skilled men — engineers, experts, and technical assistants — have either sought 
private employment, have been transferred to other bureaus of the Government, or 
put on fiirlough, in order to keep the overhead charges consistent with the expen- 
ditures. 

Reviewing the history of the Reclamation Service as a whole, its maximum activity 
and expenditures were in the year 1907. In 1902 the expenditures were less than 
$100,000, and in 1903 less than $1,000,000. In 1904 they were $2,500,000; in 1905, 
$5,000,000; in 1906, a little le.ss than $10,000,000; in 1907, nearly $14,000,000. Then 
the expenditures decreased to $10,000,000 in 1908, to about $9,000,000 in 1909, and in 
1910 they will be a little under $8,000,000. It is expected that in 1911 they will 
shrink to about $7,000,000, which sum will probably continue to be available during 
after years, assuming that the water-right charges are paid as they fall due. 

If Congress should make a loan to the fund, it would, of course, be possible to increase 
or even double the outlay and finish extensions of various systems in half the time 
otherwise required. 

This is the most critical period in the history of national irrigation since the passage 
of the reclamation act in 1902. By public notices of the Secretary of the Interior, 
issued last year, hundreds of water-right installments, involving approximately 
$1,000,000, became due on April 1, 1910. That date is a memorable one, not only to 
the settlers, whose entries are liable to cancellation for failure to make the payments 
due, but also to the Reclamation Service, which is concerned in securing the return 
of its investment in the engineering works. It is also a matter of interest to citizens 
of the number of sections containing feasible projects, the construction of which can 
not be imdertaken without additional funds. As the repayments are made through 
the local land offices and not directly to the service, some time must elapse before the 
actual amounts collected are known. On a number of the projects, like Sun River, 
Shoshone, and Huntley, the settlers have already made their initial payments, and 
will not be delinquent on the second installment until April, 1911, which enables 
them to market two crops between payments. On several other projects, such as 
the Minidoka, Klamath, Lower Yellowstone, Belle Fourche, Carlsbad, Truckee- 
Carson, North Platte, and others, the first settlers have had the use of water for two 
crops, and it is probable that a majority will be able to meet their obligations without 
difficulty. 

Detailed reports from various sources on each of the projects have been received at 
Washington. The conditions as a whole are described as favorable for a large return 
to the Reclamation fund. On several of the projects there will be no delinquents. 
On a number of projects the engineering work is not fully completed, but water is 
ready for large areas, and is being supplied on a rental basis pending the announcement 
of the actual cost of water right. The Reclamation Service has derived considerable 
revenue from these sources, and at the same time the farmers have been enabled to 
increase the areas in cultivation. The following financial statement is interesting as 
showing the status of the reclamation fund and the amounts which thus far have been 
credited to it through the operations of the Reclamation Service: 

Total moneys received and transferred to the reclamation fund from sales of public 
lands imder reclamation act to February 28, 1910, $.58,842,617.02. Approximately 
$4,500,000 are still in the Treasury of the United States, but not yet available. 

Moneys received under operations of reclamation act from all sources, in cash and 
credits, for work done, $2,379,475.04, divided as follows: Town-lot sales, .'§103,673.91; 
miscellaneous sales, water rentals, etc., $1,694,844.77; collections on water rights, 
$814,145.34. This does not include any of the moneys collected for the water rights 
which were due and payable April 1, 1910. 

THE HIGHEST DAM IN THE WORLD. 

Among the several large projects, one of especial interest is located in northern 
Wyoming. When the springtime showers and sunshine fall upon the snowy peaks of 
the lofty mountains on the eastern rim of Yellowstone Park, a thousand streams will 
rushdownward to fill to brimming the swift-flowing Shoshone River. An important 
physical change will occur at that time. The flood that once, unchecked and uncon- 
trolled, swept madly through the rock-walled gorge, will beat itself to stillness against 
a massive wall of concrete with which man has blocked the canyon. A beautiful lake, 
100 feet deep and covering 10 square miles, will appear. 



124 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

In this wonderful gash in the mountains, with perpendicular walls a thousand feet 
high, the Government has erected the highest dam in the world. It is a wedge of 
concrete 328 feet from base to top. Its height can only be appreciated when compared 
with that of some well-known structure. New York's famous Flatiron Building would 
not reach within 47 feet of the top of the dam, and the tiptop of the dome of the United 
States Capitol would fall short 21 feet of the parapet. 

In the summer, when the crops are thirsty, the big gates will be opened and the 
pent-up floods will be released into the river below. Another dam, a low structure of 
concrete, will divert the waters through a tunnel 3^^ miles long into a canal which for 
40 miles passes along the upper edge of a broad and fertile valley containing 150,000 
acres. 

Two years ago it was a desolate waste. To-day it contains more than 200 farmhouses 
and three thriving towns. Ten thousand acres produced crops last year on this project. 
With 16 farmhouses along each mile of the main highways, the valley already has a 
eubm'ban appearance. 

More than 250 farm units of 40 to 80 acres each are now available to entry, and 
offer exceptional opportunities for men of moderate means to secure homes in a 
prosperous and growing country. 

BELLEFOUECHE PROJECT, SOUTH DAKOTA. 

Close to the Black Hills, in South Dakota, lies the beautiful valley of Bellefoiu'che, 
containing 100,000 acres of grass-covered prairie. Many miles of canals have been laid 
across its level sm-face, and what was only a short time ago the finest free cattle range 
in this country is rapidly becoming a compactly settled agricultural community. 

An impressive engineering feature of this project is the Owl Creek dam, one of the 
longest and highest earthen embankments in the world. This structure, now nearing 
completion, is 6,200 feet long, has a maximum height of 115 feet, and contains 1,600,000 
cubic yards of material. 

The reservoir created by it will be the largest lake in the State. By means of a deep 
and wide canal 6^ miles long, the entire flow of Bellefourche River is turned into the 
reservoir, to be taken out again in the irrigating canals, which will supply 100,000 
acres in 1911. 

On the second unit, containing 10,000 acres, opened to entry March 1, there are about 
60 Government farms awaiting settlers. 

MONTANA PROJECTS. 

_ The a?tivities of the Reclamation Service in Montana have resulted in the comple- 
tion of two large projects and the partial construction of several others. The present 
plans provide for projects in this State as follows: 

Acres. 

Huntley 28, 921 

Lower Yellowstone 64, 622 

Sun River 276, 000 

Milk River 248, 000 

St. Mary 100, 000 

Blackfeet (Indian) 132, 000 

Flathead (Indian) 150, 000 

Fort Peck (Indian) 130, 000 

Total 1, 129, 543 

The Huntley and Lower Yellowstone projects are completed, and an important 
unit of the Sun River project was opened to settlement in 1908. Actual construction 
has begun on all the other projects except the Fort Peck. On the Flathead project 
several units have been completed, and water is now available for 13,500 acres, which 
will be allotted to successful entrymen on May 7. 

On the Sun River and Huntley projects there are first-class opportunities for home- 
eeekers to secure farms for which the water is now ready. The Sun River project 
contains 85 unentered farms, and the Huntley project 224. With the present rate of 
settlement, however, both projects will be fully taken up before the close of the crop 
season of 1910. 

While all the Government land on the Lower Yellowstone project has been entered, 
a considerable area of railroad-grant land is available at a maximum price of $2.50 per 
acre. The development of the valley since the beginning of the work of reclamation 
has been very rapid, and the time is not far distant when it will be one of the most 
prosperous districts in the Northwest. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 125 

A HARVEST FIELD 20 MILES LONG AND 6 MILES WIDE. 

In the southern part of Wyoming, where the North Platte River flows in a deep 
granite-walled canyon, another masonry dam has been erected. It rises 215 feet above 
bedrock, and back of it there is a lake with a capacity great enough to cover Rhode 
Island a foot deep. 

Located 45 miles from the nearest railway, its construction was expensive and 
difficult. All machinery, cement, and provisions for men and horses were brought 
over the long miles of sagebrush desert. 

Down the river many miles another structure of concrete turns the stored water into 
a canal 95 miles long, whence it is conveyed to the gently sloping valley lands in 
Wyoming and Nebraska. 

In the beginning of the work I visited the valley, and at one particular point X 
gazed over a broad stretch of prairie. Within the radius of my vision I could count 
only six farmhouses. 

Last year, from the same point, I saw a harvest field 20 miles long and 6 miles wide, 
and counted 600 homes. To-day on the North Platte project there are more than 
1,500 families living in homes of their own. The construction of this irrigation system 
has already increased land values in the valley more than $4,520,000. 

THE MOST SPECTACULAR PROJECT IS IN COLORADO. 

Among the valleys of the western slope, two in Colorado have focused the attention 
of the citizens of the country for the past few years. These are the Uncompahgre and 
Grand Valleys in the drainage basin of the Grand River, the most important tributary 
of the Colorado River of the West. Situated on one of the main traveled transconti- 
nental highways, in the midst of the grandest scenery on the continent, no section of 
the West is more generally known. 

It is only within the past few years that the agricultural importance of these valleys 
has impressed itself on the public mind. Surrounded by a rich mineral zone, the 
development of mines served to obscure the far greater wealth which is hidden in a 
soil of wonderful fertility and in a climate adaptable for the production of high-priced 
crops. 

In the Uncompahgre Valley the Government has one of its most spectacular projects. 
The progress of construction has been widely advertised. For several years two large 
forces of men have been burrowing night and day through a mountain 2,000 feet high 
and 6 miles thick, excavating a tunnel, one portal of which is in a profound canyon 
3,000 feet deep and the other at the upper end of a broad and fertile valley. The work 
is nearly concluded; a great underground waterway 6 miles long and capable of 
carrying a whole river has been excavated. 

President Taft, on September 23, 1909, presided at the formal ceremony. He 
placed a gold bell on a .silver plate and the electric connection released the pent-up 
floods of the Gunnison, and its waters, passing through the mountain, flowed out upon 
the Uncompahgre Valley to fructify a thirsty desert. The tunnel is lined with cement, 
as is also the main canal for several miles. 

The irrigable area of the Uncompahgre Valley is 140,000 acres, of which 36,000 acres 
were public at the beginning of the work. Approximately 15,000 acres are yet unen- 
tered, but are not at this time open to settlement. Due announcement of the opening 
of these lands to entry will be made through the public press when the canals are 
constructed to furnish water to them. 

GRAND VALLEY PROJECT, COLORADO. 

The preliminary plans have been made for the beginning of construction of a project 
in Grand Valley to irrigate 53,000 acres, of which 35,000 acres are public. It is expected 
that two years will be required to complete the works. The irrigable area in the 
project, in the opinion of horticultural experts, includes some of the finest fruit land 
in the country. The engineering works proposed include a diversion dam of masonry 
with a movable crest, maximum height 13 feet and 450 in length, 71 miles of canals 
and 12,000 feet of tunnels. 

FOUR PROSPEROUS TOWNS CREATED IN IDAHO. 

In the spring of 1904 I camped for the night on the bani^s of Snake River, Idaho, 
My companion, the engineer, confided to me his plans for a great work in this section 
which was to create in the desert a garden covering 25 square miles. He drew hia 
plans roughly in the sand as we sat by the camp fire. 



126 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915, 

"Here," he said, "I shall build a dam to turn the waters into huge canals on either 
side." When I returned another year the dam was finished. Pointing to a land- 
scape of desolation, whose outer ends touched the sky, and on which there was no 
sign of human habitation, he said: "This desert will one day become a show place — 
a garden rich and productive, and supporting in comfort a thousand families." 

Last year, standing where I did three years before, I realized that the engineer's 
dream had come true. Look where I would, in any direction, I saw no desert. Cul- 
tivated fields, with harvests ready for garnering; pleasant little homes on each 40 
and 80 acres; children playing in the sunshine, sturdy and happy; the garden crops 
being gathered for winter storage gave abundant evidence that the soil was productive, 
and, when watered gave generous rewards to the farmer. 

Twenty-two hundred families are living here to-day, when only a short time ago 
there was no sign of human life. Four prosperous towns, soon to become cities, have 
sprung up along the new railroad. This is a transformation to make you rub your 
eyes with wonder and amazement. 

IN STRAWBERRY VALLEY, UTAH. 

Bringing water which now flows into the Gulf of California into Utah's great inte- 
rior basin, from which no streams reach the sea, is an engineering work which is 
engaging the attention of the Government. 

In a camp situated near the snowy summit of the Wasatch Range a large force of 
men is driving a tunnel 4 miles long through the mountains, which will bring a 
tributary of the Colorado River into the Salt Lake Valley. A diversion dam in the 
stream below now diverts the water into a canal for several miles to a point where 
a power plant has been erected. The water is dropped through a pressure pipe upon 
the turbines, and the power generated is transmitted to that camp, now almost buried 
in the snow, where it is utilized to excavate the tunnel. 

Far below a beautiful, sunny valley awaits the completion of the work. It lies 
at the foot of a lordly range of snow-capped mountains, and, with the present irri- 
gation systems, is one of the richest agricultural districts of the State. Its crops 
are varied, and many are high priced. Peaches and apples do exceptionally well 
here, the fruit being finely flavored and highly colored. 

UMATILLA PROJECT, OREGON. 

On the banks of the Columbia River and in the valleys of its numerous tributaries 
in Washington and Oregon there has been a phenomenal development of irrigation 
in the past four years. It is only a marker for what is due to follow in the coming 
years. Here is our true inland empire, a region vast in extent, drained by the 
noblest river in the West, with soil of great depth and fertility, and a climate unsur- 
passed for the growing of fi'uits of unrivaled color and flavor, for vegetables of all 
kinds, and for the cereals and forage crops of the North Temperate Zone. In parts 
of this region the growing season is as long as that of many favored valleys in California. 

Located on the south bank of the Columbia River, in Oregon, and extending up 
the valley of the Umatilla River, the service has partially completed the Umatilla 
project, embracing 20,000 acres of land having an average elevation of 470 feet above 
sea level. In the beginning of the work, in 1906, this region was largely a sagebrush 
desert, unattractive and uninviting. 

On the occasion of my first visit there, before construction had begun, one could 
drive for miles and never see a habitation. Where the thriving young city of Her- 
miston now stands, with itsjsolid blocks of brick buildings, its fine schools and churches, 
and its charming bungalows, there were exactly three houses in sight. To-day there 
are probably 700 people residing here. 

An attractive feature about life in this community is due to the fact that the farms 
are small. Many homes have been established on 5 and 10 acre farms, which are 
located all about the town. Trees have been planted to shade the streets and lawns, 
and thousands of acres of orchards are being laid out. 

The question of a municipal water supply is being agitated in Hermiston. Near 
the new city a tract of land embracing 40 acres has been reserved. It contains a 
spring which will furnish a water supply for a city of 50,000 inhabitants, and its water 
can be carried in pipes by gravity to any part of the town. A reservoir site has been 
found on the side of the high butte just outside of town, into which the spring water 
can be readily pumped. This will insure a water system with sufficient pressure to 
furnish protection from fire. 

^^^lile land values have increased rapidly, as the result of the Government's work 
here, the prices are not regarded as unreasonable when compared with other irrigated 
valleys in the Columbia Basin. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 127 

THE LARGEST PROJECT IS AT YAKIMA. 

The largest irrigation project of the Government is in Washington, on the eastern 
side of the Cascade Mountains, in the valley of the Yakima River. A number of 
beautiful lakes have been acquired by the service and are being utilized as storage 
reservoirs to supplement the stream flow. 

An interesting feature of the work here has been the construction of the Tieton 
Canal, which for several miles hugs the edge of a precipice several hundred feet above 
the river. This is a cement-lined ditch, and the placing of the lining was a difficult 
task. 

Cement forms made in the valley near the stream were carried up the steep canyon 
side on cable ways, or by means of cars, and then set in place. More than 2 miles 
of the canal is in tunnel, and for several miles it winds around the edge of a perpen- 
dicular cliff. 

In the Yakima River the Government has a concrete dam which diverts the water 
into the Sunnyside Canal and irrigates to-day 45,000 acres, but which ultimately 
wall supply 94,000. 

The Yakima Valley is probably the best advertised agricultural district in the 
Northwest, and contains some of the most valuable agricultural and fruit lands in 
the world. It is to-day a region of small farms intensively cultivated. 

The character of farm homes is as attractive here as can be found in any farming 
region in the world. In variety of crops it is not excelled by southern California, 
while in profitable yields it probably ranks with that favored section of the South- 
west. A crop census of the lands irrigated by the Sunnyside Canal in 1909 showed 
a gross average yield per acre of |70. 

Some of the crop yields reported are difficult to credit: 

Strawberries, per acre $150- $400 

Cherries, per acre 150- 350 

Peaches, per acre 200-1, 000 

Apples, per acre 200- 800 

A strong organization of fruit growers has been in existence here for a number of 
years, and as a result the fruit of the Yakima orchards finds a market to-day all over 
the world. We are glad to pay .$1.50 per dozen in Washington now for Yakima Wine- 
saps and Spitzenbergs, or about three times what we pay for oranges. 

OKANOGAN PROJECT, WASHINGTON. 

One of the most interesting sections of the NortJiwest agriculturally is the Okanogan 
Valley, in northern Washington. While the project now being built in this valley 
by the service is classed as one of the minor works, it is destined in the near future 
to add 10,000 acres of the most valuable land in the West to the cultivated area of 
the State. The orchards of this valley are among the most attractive in the world, 
and the fruit grown ranks with the best on the market. 

For many years the valley has been so remote from transportation that its develop- 
ment has been slow. The Great Northern is now building a branch northward into 
it, and before this season's crops are gathered the Okanogan country will be in posi- 
tion to market its products in competition with the other celebrated fruit-growing 
districts of the Northwest. 

TEN APPLICANTS FOR EACH FARM — THE YUMA PROJECT, 

The wonders of the delta of the Colorado River have been described so often that 
the public is now quite familiar with the valley of the American Nile. As proof 
of the public's interest in this region, nothing better can be mentioned than the 
recent opening of the first unit of the Yuma project, in California, on March 1, 1910. 
On that date 174 farms, averaging 40 acres each, were thrown open to entry, and 
there were approximately ten applicants for each farm. Successive units to be 
opened as the work proceed, are likely to prove as attractive as the first to home- 
seekers. 

Just now the engineers are boring a tunnel under the river, in which it is proposed 
to lay a concrete-lined siphon 1,000 feet long, with an internal diameter of 14 feet. 
In this siphon a portion of the waters of the big canal on the California side will be 
passed under the river to the canal on the Arizona side. Considerable power will 
be developed at the outlet of the siphon, which will be utilized to lift water to the lands 
above the gravity system. 



128 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

SALT RIVER PROJECT, ARIZONA. 

I shall never forget my first impression of the Salt River Valley. There was a 
whisper of spring in the soft and fragrant air that morning when I stepped from the 
Pullman car. After a dusty and tedious journey across the desert, the picture that 
greeted my eyes was that of another and a tropical land. In the early dawn the 
summits of the distant hills were glowing "like a Catherine pear the side that's next 
the sun." 

In the grounds about the capitol the vegetation was almost tropical in its luxuriance 
and variety. Here and there were wide avenues of magnificent palms, or shapely 
umbrella trees, with pleasant homes almost hidden by vines and flowers. Almond 
trees in blossom filled the air with fragrance. In succeeding visits to this sunny 
valley I have been impressed and fascinated with its future possibilities. The wide 
variety of crops which may be produced profitably here must attract agricultural 
experts from all parts of the country. 

There is not a single day in the year when nature is not ready and willing to respond 
to the industry of the husbandman. The oranges are of superior quality and flavor. 
Dates yield abundantly, as also do figs, lemons, grape fruit, olives, and peaches. 

Five to seven cuttings of alfalfa are grown, averaging 7 to 10 tons per acre. 

OSTRICH FARMING IS VERY PROFITABLE. 

Ostrich farming is proving a very profitable industry, and nearly 8,000 bu-ds are 
now owned in the valley. I am told each full-grown bird is good for |30 worth of 
feathers annually. An infinite variety of small fruits and vegetables, harvested early 
when the markets are best, make the truck industry a profitable one. For eight 
months in the year the climate here is unsurpassed. 

The activities of the Government, which began in this valley almost immediately 
after the passage of the reclamation law, have resulted in a large increase in popula- 
tion and in land values. 

As an engineering task, the irrigation work laid out here by the engineers, and now 
nearing completion, is perhaps the most interesting as well as the most important 
yet undertaken. To provide an adequate water supply for 240,000 acres of land 
which, when irrigated, jump in value from nothing to 1100 or more an acre is a task 
well worthy of consideration. This is especially true if an investment of $8,500,000 
will accomplish it. 

Difficult and trying indeed has been the task, owing to the physical conditions 
and the extremely erratic character of the river which furnishes the water. To un- 
derstand the problem it is necessary to view the work on the gTOund. 

The journey from Mesa, in the valley, to the scene of the big work covers a distance 
of 62 miles, 20 miles of which are across the desert. Here is a region quite unique in 
itself and differing materially from the deserts to the north. Its vegetation is more 
varied and interesting. The giant cactus here attains a great height and is often 
found in groves. A hundred species of thorny plants grow here. 

At the end of the road across the desert we come upon a range of mountains whose 
pinnacled peaks rise straight up from the plain. Here our road leaves the desert 
and we enter a region rugged, upended, with rocks painted in wonderful colors. 

The Government has carved this highway for many miles from the walls of rock. 
It is an inspiring trip, which would be terrifying but for the fact the road is broad 
and the grades are gentle. 

At the end of our "journey we stand on the brink of the wonderful gorge Salt River 
has cut through the mountains. Far below us the stream winds its way in a deep 
and shadowy canyon. Across the entrance to that gash in the sandstone cliffs the 
engineers have thrust a massive dam of rock and cement, which for all time will 
check the floods of the turbulent stream. 

THE ROOSEVELT DAM. 

The Roosevelt Dam, which is about completed as you read the story to-day, is in 
many respects the most remarkable structure of its kind in the world. Its towering 
height, 280 feet, its length on top, 1,080 feet, the inspiring scenery in which it is 
located, and the enormous capacity of the reservoir created by it combine to make 
it one of the most stupendous engineering works of modern times. 

Conceive, if you can, two valleys — one 12 miles, the other 15 miles in length, and 
each from 1 to 3 miles wide — transformed into a lake 200 feet deep in places, and 
containing enough water to cover Delaware a foot deep. 

The Salt River reservoir, when full, has a capacity suflftcient to fill a canal 300 
feet wide and 19 feet deep extending from Chicago to San Francisco. It would sub- 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 129 

merge the entire city of Chicago, which embraces 190 square miles, a depth of 11^ 
feet. 

My one regret is that the space allotted me is too little to permit me to describe 
the charms and advantages of other projects of the Government. I should like to 
tell you of the opportunities on the Klamath project, located in southern Oregon in 
a region of unrivaled scenic beauty; of the wonderful progress made in the Boise 
Valley, in Idaho, and the promise of even greater advance as the work of the Govern- 
ment nears completion; of the Orlaud project, in the Sacramento Valley, the land of 
fruits and flowers; of the Rio Grande Valley, where there will one day be erected the 
most stupendous dam in the West — a region in which irrigation began before the 
Spanish invasion, which will become fruitful and prosperous. 

The beacon of hope shines brightly in the West. It beckons the landless man to 
the manless land. 

Mr. Kahn. Mr. Chairman, since the last hearing of the committee 
the mayor of San Francisco has arrived, and I would like to ask your 
indulgence to hear him for just three or four minutes. 

The Chairman. Very well. 

Mr. Kahn. Mayor McCarthy. 

STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK H. M'CARTHY, MAYOR OF THE 
CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO. 

Mr. McCarthy. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, 
I thank you very much for permitting me to address you this morn- 
ing and giving, as you have, three or four minutes, which will be 
about two minutes more than I will take up. I feel, Mr. Chairman 
and gentlemen, that this question, in so far as San Francisco is con- 
cerned, has been thoroughly covered; if not, it will be, as I under- 
stand Congressman Kahn will follow me. As a result, I have not 
come across the continent and enjoyed that very pleasant trip for 
the privilege of addressing this committee. I have come across the 
continent to invite you, in behalf of the people of San Francisco, 
and your associates, and through you the American people generally, 
to attend, through the courtesy of the legislative department of this 
Government, the exposition to be held in that most beautiful of all 
cities, San Francisco, in 1915. I thank you. [Applause.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. JULIUS KAHN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 
THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. 

Mr. Kahx. ^Ir Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I 
regret exceedingly that I should have delayed the hearings in this 
matter on account of my ill health, but I will sum up San Francisco's 
case this morning, feeling confident that the committee will weigh 
everything that has been said on both sides of the question, and 
feeling confident, too, that ultimately you will decide m San Fran- 
cisco's favor. I want to add further, that whatever I may say this 
mornmg in criticism of some statements that have been made by the 
gentlemen on the other side is said in the friendliest manner; there 
is no desire on my part to be bitter, and I want to be absolutely fair. 

It is well, at the beginning, to outline the steps San Francisco has 
taken for an exposition in connection with the celebration of the 
completion of the greatest engineering feat, probably, in the history 
of the world. . Mr. Bell told you last Friday, I believe, that it was 
Mr. R. B. Hale, of San Francisco, who, at a large gathering of citizens 
73172—11 9 



130 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

first discussed this very matter and brought it to the attention of 
the people of Cahfornia. In 1906, after a number of interviews with 
representative business men of San Francisco and with the officers of 
commercial organizations, I introduced in the House of Representa- 
tives, tentatively, a bill for an exposition at San Francisco in 1913. 
I was interviewed about the matter at the time, and the interviews 
are extant in the papers of that day, and I specifically stated that 
it was the desire of San Francisco to give notice to the world thus 
early that she would hold an international exposition at the time of the 
completion of the Panama Canal, and also to celebrate the four 
hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean by Balboa. 
That bill was introduced in January, 1906. Three months later 
came that terrible disaster that overwhelmed the business and 
financial sections of San Francisco. Of course, for the time being 
we had to drop the exposition matter. We commenced to rebuild 
our city, to rehabilitate it, and for three years we worked incessantly 
to accomplish that result. 

Finally, toward the beginning of October, 1909, we felt that we had 
earned a holiday, and we decided to hold a local celebration, which we 
called the Portola Festival, in honor of the discoverer of San Francisco 
Bay, it being the one hundred and fortieth anniversary of the dis- 
covery of that superb body of water. It was an overwhelming success. 
Four hundred and eighty thousand visitors came, not alone from 
the vicinitj^ of San Francisco, but from the Pacific Coast States, from 
Middle Western States, and even from New York, and New Yorkers, 
in interviews published in the San Francisco newspapers, stated that 
the pageants and the decorations and the wonderful electrical effects 
were far superior to the Hudson-Fulton Festival that had just been 
held in New York. Then our citizens immediately took up the 
work again of launching the Panama-Pacific International Exposi- 
tion. At the beginning of the short session of Congress I introduced 
the bill of which I spoke several days ago. It called for the app)ro- 
priation of $5,000,000. It was in the usual form of exposition bills. 
It directed that the exposition be inaugurated by the Government of 
the United States, and provided for a Government commission. It 
was assigned to this committee. Subsequently there was a great 
mass meeting in San Francisco. The leading business men were 
there. I had been in San Francisco but a few weeks before and told 
the members of the various commercial organizations that there 
was a jdeep-seated feeling in Congress against any financial assistance 
for expositions. They raised among themselves at that mass meet- 
ing, within two hours, $4,089,000, and it became evident to the 
projectors of the meeting that it would be easy to raise $7,500,000 
Dy private subscriptions. 

They did not know what they could do in a financial way until 
they tried, for wlien they did try they found that the people of Cali- 
fornia were so enthusiastically in earnest that they were willing to 
go into their pockets and subscribe more liberally than any other 
community in the entire United States had ever subscribed for expo- 
sition purposes. And so a committee was appointed, headed by the 
governor of the State, to come to Washington and ask that a new 
resolution be introduced without any request for Government aid. 
I introduced that resolution at the request of that committee, repre- 
senting, as it did, the people of the State of California. The gov- 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 131 

ernor was at the head of it, the mayor of San Francisco was a mem- 
ber, one of our justices of the supreme court was a member, ex-Sec- 
retary of the Navy, Mr. Metcalf, was a member, and prominent citi- 
zens from every section of the State made up its personnel. The gov- 
ernor, having been a Member of Congress himself, soon learned what 
the temper of Congress was with reference to loans or appropriations 
in furtherance of expositions, and we decided then that we would not 
ask for a dollar of money from the Government of the United States 
for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. That resolution 
(H. J. Res. 213), as I say, was introduced by me, and two days later 
New Orleans made her first move. She introduced a resolution 
(H. J. Res. 214), through her Representative, Gen. Estopinal, in 
identically the same language as mine, with the exception that the 
words "New Orleans" and ''Louisiana" appeared wherever in my 
resolution the words "San Francisco" and "California" appeared. 
My resolution provided for the celebration not only of the comple- 
tion of the canal, but also the discovery of the Pacific Ocean, and 
this first New Orleans resolution also provided for the celebration of 
the discovery of the Pacific Ocean. About a week later New Orleans 
put in her second resolution (H. J. Res. 218), and that, like mine, went 
to the Foreign Aft'airs Committee. I was surprised to hear my good 
friend, Gen. Estopinal, and my distinguished friend, Mr. Wickliffe, 
plead the baby act, and say, "Yes, we went before that committee 
to be heard, but we were forced to go there." I am surprised at it. 
Nobody forced them. They went of their own accord. No one forced 
them to introduce a resolution. They did it of their own accord, and 
they had a full, fair, and free hearing, just as San Francisco had. 

Now, at those hearings before the Foreign Affairs Committee the 
governor of Louisiana stated the position of his people, in answer to 
a question by Mr. Garner of Texas, which reads: 

Does your com])any or your State expect in the future to ask anything of Congress 
in the way of an appropriation? 

And Gov. Sanders replied: 

I am going to be just as frank with you about that as possible. We regard the cele- 
bration of the opening of the Panama ('anal as a national affair. We are not asking 
for an appropriation. We are asking for a location. But in the years to come, if 
Congress looks at this thing from a broad national standpoint, my belief is that they 
will help the fair, no matter where located. And my belief is, Mr. Garner, that they 
ought to help the fair, no matter where located, and from the experience that Congress 
has had, judging from the celebration in Philadelphia, in 1876, down to the last one 
of international importance at St. Louis, I have no reason to believe that this Congress 
will not help this celebration, wherever held. 

That has been their position all the way through this controversy; 
they expect Congress to help the fair, and this very bill which is 
pending here to-day is intended to have Congress designate New 
Orleans in order that New Orleans may demand help for her fair. 
AMiat did the governor say at the present hearing with respect to 
the matter ? This is what he said : 

If this is a matter of national importance then, Mr. Chairman, it is worthy of national 
consideration. If this is a matter of such importance, that all the peoples of the 
earth should be asked to be gathered at a given point, then it is worthy of national 
consideration and national supervision. And that bill that you are called upon to 
consider, introduced by Gen. Estopinal, does put the control of this exposition ac 
New Orleans in the hands and under the direction of the National Government, and 
it is right and proper that this exposition should be under the supervision of the 
National Government. 



132 PROPOSED PANAMA OANAIi EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Now, if New Orleans were absolutely sincere in not asking for 
national aid she would do just as San Francisco has done, stand by 
her resolution of invitation, pure and simple. That accomplishes all 
that she now claims she is trying to accomplish. It authorizes the 
President of the United States to issue an invitation to foreign 
nations and it makes no provision whatever for Government supervi- 
sion or Government control, nor does it inaugurate through the 
Government any exposition, and that is the crux of this entire propo- 
sition. You all know what the sentiment of the House is with respect 
to appropriations for expositions. 

Mr. Nelson. I do not wish to interrupt your argument, but are 
you going to explain what San Francisco expects Congress to do with 
reference to buildings for the exposition ? 

Mr. Kahn. Her resolution speaks for itself; and the bill which is 
pending before this committee speaks for itself. 

The Chairman. You mean San Francisco ? 

Mr. Nelson. I mean San Francisco. 

Mr. Kahn. Yes, I will explain her position thoroughly; I will go 
into that very thoroughly in a few moments. 

Mr. Nelson. All right. 

Mr. Kahn. Now, as Mr. Bell so ably explained the other day to this 
committee, New Orleans, or her exposition company, can not collect 
a dollar of the money that would be raised under her bond issue 
unless the Congress of the United States inaugurates or creates her 
exposition. It is expressly nominated in the bond, and she can not 
get a dollar without congressional recognition. Now, this matter of 
Government aid for expositions is a pretty old one. Wlien the first 
proposition came up in the Congress of the United States for the 
Centennial Exposition, if you will take the time to read the debates, 
you will discover that Members on the floor of both Houses were 
tearful that it was going to cost the Government a great deal of money. 
The centennial managers said it would not cost the Government any 
money at all. And in one of the supplementary bills which was 
passed in aid of that exposition the Congress inserted this very 
provision : 

Provided, however, That the United States shall not be liable, dii-ectly or indirectly, 
for any expenses attending such exposition or by reason of the same. 

And, I dare say that the members of the Centennial Commission 
felt that they would not require any money at the time that provision 
was put into the bill. But why did they come to Congress subse- 
quently? What gave them their standing before Congress? They 
appealed to Congress upon this ground: 

You have inaugurated this exposition; it is your baby, it is your creature, it was 
created by this Government, and national honor demands that you should come to 

its assistance. 

That appeal opened the purse strings of the Nation and they got 
their appropriations. San Francisco realizes her own ability, and 
she does not intend to put herself in any position where she can even 
come to the Congress or the United States at a later day and say ''pull 
us out of the hole." We know what we can do in the West; we 
know what we are capable of; we have such absolute faith in our 
ability to make a success of this enterprise that we will burn all our 
bridges behind us and stand purely upon our own proposition, 
namely, that we, and we alone, will finance tliis undertaking. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 133 

Now, since San Francisco has made her position so absolutely clear, 
the governor of Louisiana states before this committee that he desires 
you not to consider the proposition for a million-dollar appropriation 
for a Government exhibit at New Orleans. This is what the governor 
said here on last Friday morning: 

On behalf of the company having in charge the celebration of this event in New 
Orleans I desire to make this statement: Our position from the very beginning regard- 
ing governmental aid has been that we believe it to be the duty of the Government 
to make such appropriation for exhibit purposes as the Government itself may deem 
fit and proper. We understand, however, that there is some objection to the Estopinal 
bill on the ground that it carries with it a million-dollar appropriation for a govern- 
mental exhibit. If, in the wisdom of the committee and this Congress, it desires to 
strike that portion of the bill out, we will acquiesce in that with this distinct under- 
standing that we do not believe or in any way admit the principle that the Govern- 
ment should not pay for its own exhibit, nor do we in any way, shape, or form bind 
ourselves not to ask for the Government to make such an exhibit. We want to make 
that statement, Mr. Chairman, in justice to ourselves and in justice to the committee, 
and in justice to our opponents who will now follow us. 

Our position has not changed, nor will it change in this matter, no matter what 
may be the action of the committee, whether it strikes out the appropriation of a mil- 
lion dollars or not. We think that this Government, wherever an exposition will be 
held, should bear the expense for its own exhibit. If it is held in San Francisco, we 
certainly will expect every Member of Congress from Louisiana to vote for a govern- 
mental exhibit there. 

Now, we do not take any position of that kind. We don't intend 
to ask for an appropriation at any time. But even if you do eliminate 
the million-dollar appropriation from the Estopinal bill which is 
before you, that bill still commits the Government of the United 
States to this New Orleans exposition. There is provision for a 
Government commission. The language of the bill, if you will 
permit me to read it to you, right in the preamble, is as follows: 

Whereas, such an exhibition should be national and international in character, so 
that not only the people of the United States and the insular- possessions thereof, but 
all the nations of the world as well, can participate, and should therefore have the 
sanction of the United States. 

That is the very language that enables them to collect on their 
bonds. If you strike out that language and the} do not receive the 
sanction of the United States, as expressed by Congress, they will 
not have a single cent with which to build their exposition. All the 
way through the provisions of this bill disclose the fact that it is to be 
a Government exposition. As I stated a moment ago, there is a 
Government commission. The President appoints that Government 
commission; the Secretary of State calls the commission together; 
all the functions of the Government are called into play, and that 
fact, and that alone, will enable them to hold any exposition, because 
if they do not have that Government sanction they can not get their 
money. 

Now, there is a division of sentiment down in New Orleans to-day 
as to just what they ought to do about it. It has worried them, 
worried them a good deal. I have here editorials from their two 
leading newspapers of January 13. This is what the Picayune says: 

The delegation from Louisiana, assisted by distinguished citizens from the sister 
State of Mississippi, now at Washington, have rendered great service in working for 
congressional recognition of New Orleans as the locality for the holding of the Panama 
Canal Exposition. New Orleans made an important coup yesterday in withdrawing 
from her exposition bill the request for an appropriation by the United States Gov- 
ernment of $1,000,000. The San Francisco delegation in "Congress had previously 
asked for a congressional appropriation of five millions, but, having withdrawn the 



134 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

request, it was thought that New Orleans should put herself on the same basis of asking 
no pecuniary favors. But the New Orleans bill which contained the request for the 
million appropriation provided that the Persident should appoint on the part of the 
Government a board with power and authority to supervise the financial affairs of the 
exposition and to employ accountants and other oflficials to be paid by the exposition 
company for their services. Now, that no money is asked or expected from the 
National Government it can scarcely, be supposed that the National Government 
would have any right of supervision over the New Orleans exposition funds or should 
desire from any point of view to supervise them, and it would seem wise to cancel the 
proposition for a supervision committee. As the proposition now stands, if the expo- 
sition should be held at New Orleans, the exposition company would make every 
needed provision for housing and displaying any exhibit "Uncle Sam" might make, 
and possibly for the maintenance and support of Government officials and employees 
who might be sent here on any Government business. 

^^^lether the Government would pay freight on the material of its exhibit will be 
governed by usage in such cases, but the only thing for which the exposition would 
be indebted to the Government would be the official consent for the locating of the 
exposition and the invitation extended to foreign Governments. This absolute sev- 
erance and complete dissociation on the part of the National Government of any con- 
nection or pecuniary participation in a national and international exposition is a new 
departure in such matters, but it is the proper relation the Government should hold 
to a Southern State, and it is all we should ask or expect. It only will result in put- 
ting New Orleans and Louisiana on their mettle and inspire them to do their best and 
with no favors to expect from any source. All the pride and energy of our people 
are aroused, and if they are given the opportunity they will succeed. 

That is from the Picayune. This is from the New Orleans Times- 
Democrat of the same date. It is a lengthy editorial, but the por- 
tion with reference to Government appropriation is the last para- 
graph : 

There was some talk yesterday of New Orleans withdrawing that portion of the bill 
which provides for Federal aid to the exposition, in order to win some twenty odd votes. 
We hope that this great sacrifice will not be made, and reports from Washington would 
indicate that it is not necessary. Congress provided for the Philadelphia Centennial 
of 1876 without an appropriation, and although the money was voted later, a few 
months before the exposition opened, the original failure caused great demoralization, 
injury, and delay, and marred the success of our first world's fair. This was recog- 
nized as so serious a blunder that it has never been repeated with any really national 
exposition. 

Now, here you have two New Orleans newspapers, one saying that 
all requests for money should be abandoned; the other saying that 
the request for money should not be abandoned. Vfhj, gentlemen 
from Louisiana, you have your community divided against itself. 
In Cahfornia, on the other hand, everybody is agreed that we are in 
a position to finance this undertaking ourselves mthout asking for 
a single cent from the Congress of the United States. Now, if New 
Orleans really wants nothing but the location, as mdicated by the 
Governor of Louisiana the other day when he withdrew the request 
for an|appropriation, there is already on the files of the House, or, 
rather, on the calendar of the House, the resolution of Mr. Estopinal, 
reported to the House by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, which 
wiU enable us to get squarely before the House upon that proposition; 
we can take a vote upon it almost any day, and the House will have 
immediate opportunity to say whether the invitation shall be ex- 
tended on behalf of San Francisco or on behalf of New Orleans. 
But the gentlemen from New Orleans can not risk their fair on that 
proposition; they would not have any money to hold the fair on that 
proposition;. for they have to come to Congress and get Congress to 
inaugurate the fair, otherwise they can not hold it. 

In behalf of San Francisco, in behalf of her delegation, and in 
behalf of the people of California, I repeat, without equivocation and 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 135 

with no mental reservation, that we do not propose at any time to 
ask for a single cent of money in any way, shape, or manner for this 
exposition. 

Mr. WiCKLiFFE. Will the gentleman permit me to interrupt him 
for just this one question ? I will ask you if on the 20th of December 
you did not state on the floor of the House that at a later date it 
was probable you would appear and ask for an appropriation for a 
Government exhibit ? 

Mr. Kahn. I do not know whether I used that exact language. I 
said something to that effect, however. But I qualified it at that 
time even, as you will see if you will read the express language. 

Mr. WiCKLiFFE. Suppose you let me read it: 

Mr. Cox of Indiana. Will the people of your State ask for an appropriation to 
require the Federal Government to make an exhibit at the exposition? 

Mr. Kahn. The people of my city will possibly do that later, but at the present 
time and during this Congress they do not propose to ask anything of that kind. 

Mr. Cox of Indiana. Have the people of your city or the committee in charge of 
the measure made any estimate as to the amount they will likely ask, if any, for this 
purpose? 

Mr. Kahn. The committee have been looking up the statistics to show what the 
Government has done heretofore at other expositions, but it is the present desire of 
the directors of the exposition company to submit that matter, if it is submitted at 
all, to Congress and ask the Congress to fix the amount. We will certainly not ask 
anything that will exceed any amount that has been allowed heretofore for a Federal 
exhibit. 

Mr. Kahn. That is exactly correct; the matter vnW be submitted, 
if it is submitted at all, to Congress. And as a matter of fact, when 
the directors of the exposition company went into the figures they 
found that the appropriations for different expositions varied so 
much that they decided positively and emphatically not to ask for a 
single cent, and now, through me, they declare their position on that 
matter as a finality. 

Mr. WiCKLiFFE. Then the gentleman has changed his position 
within the last two or three weeks ? 

Mr. Kahn. The gentleman has not changed his position. 

Mr. WiCKLiFFE. Then you stand by what you said on the 20th of 
December ? 

Mr. Kahn. I qualified it : I said that the directors of the exposition 
were giving the matter thorough investigation. And they did inves- 
tigate it, and they came to the conclusion absolutely that they did not 
want a dollar, even for a Government exhibit. They submit it now. 
I said they would submit it later; I submit it to this committee here 
and now, and state emphatically that that is their position in the 
matter. 

Mr. CuLLOP. I would like to ask you a question. Do you propose, 
in view of your statement, for the Government to make an exhibit 
at the exposition if it is held at San Francisco ? 

Mr. Kahn. No, sir. 

The Chairman. I wish you would elaborate that. 

Mr. Kahn. We will ask the various States of the Union and the 
municipalities of this country to exhibit. There have been Govern- 
ment exliibits at practically every exposition held in this country ; it 
is not a novelty. It is nothing new. It does not add much to the 
success or failure of an exposition. It is frequently asked for in order 
to get a big sum of money to help build up an exposition and make a 
showing. We have $17,500,000, as much as Chicago had to put up 



136 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL. EXPOSITION, 1915. 

her exposition, and we do not need the Government's exhibit to make 
ours a success. 

Mr. CuLLOP. Is it your purpose, then, for the Government to invite 
the other nations to make an exhibit and then not have one of this 
Government's there ? 

Mr. Kahn. Let me explain my position and the position of my 
people clearly upon that point. That is a question that has been 
asked a good many times. 

The Chairman. I think that is very important; I think I would 
make that very clear if I were you. 

Mr. Kahn. Yes; I will explain it exactly. I said a moment ago 
that we will ask the States, and that we will ask the municipalities to 
make exhibits; we will appoint our commissioners to go to the various 
State legislatures and appear before the various city councils, and, 
present our claims. We can do that without fear of being turned 
down, because whenever there has been an exposition in any section 
of this country and an appeal for a California display was made to 
our people, the people of California, through their legislature, have 
invariably appropriated large sums of money for a California display; 
thus we expended $300,000 at Chicago, $130,000 at St. Louis, $40,000 
at Buffalo, and so on all the way down the line, even to $10,000 at 
New Orleans in 1885. And we feel assured that when the California 
commissioners go to the various States and the various municipalities, 
their appeals will not be in vain. But we are taking the chances on 
that and we are willing to take them. 

Now, so far as the foreign governments are concerned, we do not 
know, frankly, what the feeling is over there toward expositions. We 
know what it is here in Washington ; we know that there is an intense 
feeling against giving a single dollar for an exposition. It may be 
that in some of the countries of Europe they are exposition sick, too, 
and that we will have some difficulty in getting them to appropriate 
moneys for that purpose. But even in foreign expositions California 
has done her share to make them a success. We sent over one of our 
big trees to the Crystal Palace, in London, and made a display there; 
we voted $130,000 for an exhibit in Paris; we voted money for an 
exhibition at Hamburg; we voted money for an exhibition at Turin 
and at Rome. Why there scarcely has been an exposition held in all 
Europe where California has not gone to the front and made a dis- 
play, and when her commissioners, following the invitation of the 
President of the United States, present themselves to these foreign 
governments, we feel absolutely confident that we will secure exhibits 
from them, even though our own Government does not make an 
exhibit. We have been exceedingly liberal in such matters. Why, I 
am amazed that the great Mississippi Valley, which has had three 
international expositions, should wish to deny San Francisco — that 
city of which every American ought to be more than proud — the poor 
boon of simply extending an invitation to foreign governments to 
exhibit at the international exposition there in 1915. That is our 
position. She will send her commissioners — the State of California 
will — and we feel confident of the result. We know what we can do. 

Why, back in 1893 and 1894, when tliis country was in the throes 
of a panic, right on the heels of the Cliicago exposition, the people of 
San Francisco went down into their pockets and raised $300,000 for a 
midwinter fair. They built a fair that cost $1,250,000. They never 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 137 

had a 5-cent piece from the city, nor the State, nor the Nation; they 
paid every obHgation, sent back the exhibits to the places where they 
originated, as they had agreed to do, never once appeahng to an 
individual to help them out financially or otherwise, and they had a 
surplus in the treasury when it was all over. That is what makes 
us feel confident, for we know what we can do; we have had the 
experience. We have handled large crowds, and we know the 
people for whom we speak. Why, the Portola Festival, of which 
mention has been made, did not even test the full capacity of all our 
hotels and our restaurants, and we had 480,000 nonresident people 
within our gates, strangers within our gates. There were fully in 
the neighborhood of 900,000 people in San Francisco during that 
festival. We know what we can do. Why, a week or ten days ago 
we had an aviation meet in San Francasco ; a similar one was held in 
New Orleans several weeks ago. A Member of the House who was 
present during that aviation meet told some of our members that the 
mayor of New Orleans had to appeal through the newspapers to the 
people there to patronize it, while we, at San Francasco, on the 
opening day of our aviation meet, had 100,000 spectators who paid 
admissions into the grounds. That is the difference; that tells the 
whole story; that shows what the two cities are respectively capable 
of doing. 

Now, what is the purpose of expositions ? Is it simply to enable 
a manufacturer or a producer to put up a beautiful exhibit ? Why, 
you and I know that it would not pay him to do that. He goes to an 
exposition in order to create a new market, in order to be better able 
to sell his wares, in order to let the world at large know what he is 
producing and to get customers to buy. That is the purpose of an 
exposition; and where is there a better market in the world to-day 
than in the great and growing West ? 

My friend, Mr. Knowland, on last Saturday, told you of the mar- 
velous growth that has been made in the population of the West. 
The gentleman who is the president of the Tulane University — a very 
able man, I assume, I presume, he is; in fact, I do not doubt it for a 
moment, for he could not hold that position if he were not — came here 
and in a sneering manner told you that we had a capacity for padding 
our census in a bungling manner. I want to tell that gentleman 
something about the census of San Francisco. Ten years ago the 
supervisor of the census there was a university professor; in the case 
of this last census many of the students of Berkeley and Stanford took 
the examination and were appointed enumerators, and when he 
intimates that the university students and university professors 
bunglingly pad the census I am afraid he is unwittingly denouncing 
his own compeers and aspersing the character and fair fame of 
university professors and university students generally. We have 
no fear but that a thorough investigation of the census of California 
would indicate that we have grown just as the census figures have 
given; why, the whole West has grown; it is not California alone; 
the entire West has grown; and when these gentlemen paraphrase 
the poem of Bishop Berkeley and speak of the star of empire taking 
its course southward, we rather admire the figure of speech, but we 
know that the facts do not bear it out. 

Now, San Francisco is the one city in the world where the Occident 
and the Orient meet. It is probably the most cosmopolitan city in 



138 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

the world. There is no doubt but that it is one of the most cosmo- 
pohtan. We have representatives of every race and from every dime 
in that city. We have in our universities students from Central 
America, from South America, students from Mexico, students from 
China, students from Japan, students from the Philippines, students 
from all over the East, and from all over the world. Such matters 
speak for themselves regarding the cosmopoUtan character of our 
people. 

The advocates of New Orleans, during these hearings, dwelt princi- 
pally upon the trade of Central America and South America. They 
seemed to ignore Europe; and as for Asia, well, the attitude of San 
Francisco toward Asiatics was so uncompromising that it was not 
worth while considering Asia. And what is the truth about the 
matter ? We, out there, as Mr. Bell well put it the other day, object 
simply to the admission of the coohes; that is all. We do not object 
to the professional men, to the merchants, the students, the travelers 
for pleasure. There has never been any legislation against them; we 
have never tried to keep them out. Why, they, as well as all the peo- 
ples of the world, know about San Francisco ; they know about the 
glorious Golden Gate; they know of San Francisco's wonderful 
recuperation from her disaster; they know the pluck and the courage 
and enterprise of her people, and they are anxious to go there and 
behold with their own ej^es what has been wrought in a few years. 

But trade between nations, after all, is but an amplification of busi- 
ness between individuals. Nations trade with each other; individuals 
do business with each other. Right in the city of New Orleans there 
are dozens, yes, hundreds of her merchants who sell goods to their 
customers day after day, but who never once think of inviting those 
customers to cross the thresholds of their homes and to sit down to 
break bread at their tables. 

Social and pohtical equality are a different thing from business, and 
we have found that we can trade with the countries of the Orient 
and do business with them, and buy and sell large quantities of 
goods from them and to them, without inviting their coolies to come 
and sit down with us and break bread at our tables. 

And our opponents are inclined to refer to those Asiatic troubles 
in rather a sneering way and speak of the war scares that occur 
occasionally mth reference to the Asiatic question. As Mr. Bell 
has so well suggested, those scares are invariably hatched here in the 
East. ^Tiy, there is not a single battleship of the United States on 
the Pacific 'Ocean to-day. They are all in the Atlantic. Your last 
war, your Spanish- American War, originated over here on the 
Atlantic. Your war scare about the Venezuelan question was in 
connection with affairs occurring on the Atlantic, and when they 
twit us about the fear of causing international comphcations, because 
some hoodlum cuts off a Chinaman's queue, I want to say that the 
people of New Orleans had the hearts of their countrymen palpi- 
tating pretty rapidly when they lynched 11 Itahans down there a 
few years ago. 

But that Spanish-American War brought with it some terrible 
lessons, y The trip of the Oregon was watched with bated breath by 
the entire world. She sailed from the port of San Francisco, went 
down, down, down around Cape Horn, then up, up, up along the 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 139 

shores of the Argentine Repubhc and of Brazil, finally to take part 
in the battle of Santiago de Cuba, and not an inconsiderable part at 
that. The world applauded the heroism of Capt. Clark and his men, 
but it became evident that that trip should never again be imposed 
upon the ships of war of the United States. Shortly after peace had 
been restored, the California delegation in the Congress of the United 
States — and I was a member of the delegation at that time — called 
upon the President of the United States, Mr. McKinley, and urged 
him to exert his utmost efforts to secure the passage at an early date 
of a bill to authorize the construction of an interoceanic canal. So 
California did her share toward getting the canal started. I wonder 
if the Louisiana delegation ever went to the President of the United 
States on that kind of a proposition ? 

And when they speak of the railroad magnates who opposed that 
canal legislation, look up the records of the House of Representatives 
and Senate of the United States, and you will find that the California 
Representatives and Senators voted for the bills. It did not make 
any difference to them what the railroad magnates felt or wanted. 
We knew what the people of California and of the United States 
wanted. The people wanted that canal, and the work was author- 
ized. And the people wanted it constructed for the express purpose 
of bringing the Pacific closer to the Atlantic. 

You remember the construction of the Panama Railroad. They 
say that every tie in it cost a human life. It was built across a 
swamp; fever lurked everywhere, but with all kinds of obstacles to 
overcome the railroad was completed. Why? To enable the people 
in the Eastern States to go the quicker to Cahfornia and bring home 
the gold that lay in her mines. And so the building of this canal is 
intended to bring the people of the East closer to California. It is 
not going to bring them any closer to New Orleans, because the 
eastern people, as has been so repeatedly urged by her own spokes- 
men, are already fairly close to New Orleans; but it is being built in 
order to bring the people of the West closer to the people of the East. 
That is the purpose of that enterprise. And when these gentlemen 
come here and scoff at our proposition and say that it is in bad taste 
for us to fight for it because the managers of the transcontinental 
railroads opposed the canal, and that San Francisco's success would 
put money into the coffers of these very transcontinental railroads, 
I want to ask them whether the Illinois Central is not actively en- 
gaged in trying to get the location for New Orleans ? Possibly that 
railroad is doing all its propaganda work for the Crescent City pro 
bono pubhco, but I tliink it is rather a case of pro bunko pubhco. 

I want to know whether the Southern Railroad is not working for 
New Orleans? I want to know whether the Louisville & Nashville 
is not working for New Orleans? I want to know whether the 
Queen & Crescent is not working for New Orleans? And are they 
doing it in the hope of not getting any reward? I don't suppose 
they are trying to get a few dollars into their coffers. Oh, no. 
What is the attitude of the transcontinental lines? I will ask the 
governor of Louisiana. He will tell you. They are neutral. The 
governor knows this. 

Gov. Sanders. No; I do not. You can not prove it by me. 
Summon .your own witnesses. I will testify in my time. 



140 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION", 1915. 

Mr. KLahn. Well, all I know is' what I have seen in your news- 
papers. They say that you have received assurances that they 
would be neutral and we of San Francisco have seen none of their 
activities. The correspondence between the governor and the presi- 
dent of the Southern racific was published. I have it here, but I 
do not want to encumber the record. It is in a New Orleans paper. 

Gov. Sanders. Put it in if you want to. 

Mr. Kahn. We do not want to encumber the record. It is not 
necessary. Then we have here the representatives of the United 
Fruit Co. ; splendid people, heartily in favor of New Orleans. Nat- 
urally so, because they all hope to get a few shekels from prospective 
travelers in carrying them down to the Isthmus and return, if the 
exposition should be held in New Orleans. That is their wonderful 
interest in this matter. They have come here before you to tell 
you what a wonderful trip it is, but I boldly venture the prediction 
that as the result of the building of the canal there wiU not be a 
single new steamship line go into the harbor of New Orleans or out 
of it. As a result of the building of the canal there will be half a 
dozen new steamship lines coming into San Francisco. They will 
ply between the Atlantic seaboard and San Francisco and the cities 
of the Pacific coast. There will be steamship lines from European 
ports to San Francisco and the Pacific coast, lines that will cross the 
Atlantic and go right straight down through the canal without 
touching on our Atlantic seaboard. That is what this canal means 
to us, and the very purpose of building the canal was to bring the 
Pacific coast nearer to the markets of the world by the water routes. 

The governor of Mississippi and our friend Senator-elect John 
Sharp WilHams spoke feelingl}^ about those alkali plains that j^ou 
have to cross in going to California. Let me tell you something 
about them. Ten years ago, down in southeastern California, there 
was a great area of land which the colored porter on the Pullman car 
would point out to you as you crossed it and say, ''That is the great 
Colorado desert; not even a coyote or a rattlesnake can eke out an 
existence there." That was 10 years ago. And then some enter- 
prising individuals tapped the Colorado Kiver and they brought life- 
giving water upon those alkali plains. It is no longer the Colorado 
desert. The porter now points it out to you and says, "That is the 
great Imperial Valley of California." And there are 30,000 happy, 
contented American citizens living there. Why, the first melons that 
come into this section of the country are grown at a httle place out 
there on what was formerly that alkali desert — a little place called 
Coachello — and it sends hundreds of carloads of Coachello nutmeg 
melons to the eastern market early in the year. Down there they 
cut alfalfa 8 and 10 times a year. Down there, through the experi- 
ments made by the Department of Agriculture, they learned that 
the}^ could raise the long-staple Egyptian cotton, and so we have 
put thousands of acres under cultivation there, raising long-staple 
Egyptian cotton. That is one of your alkali plains. Why, when 
you speak of opportunities, the mind of man does not conceive the 

f)ossibilities of that wonderful western country. Put water upon the 
and anywhere out there and if you drive down a stick it will grow up 
a tree, the soil is so marvelously fertile. Millions of American citi- 
zens will find their homes upon those very alkali plains that have been 
sneered at and derided by the governor of Mississippi and the Senator 



PROPOSED PANAMA CAJSTAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 141 

elect from Mississippi. Then, in these hearings we have had a good 
many sneers about the gold of California and the worked-out gold 
mines. Gentlemen, do you know that in this year of grace — or, 
rather, in the year 1910 — we took out of the gold mines of California 
$21,000,000 in that precious metal ? And then to talk of worked-out 
gold mines. 

California is the land of sunshine, fruit, and flowers. Why, gold 
is of secondary importance with us: yes, in proportion to our other 
products, it is inconsiderable in comparison. We sent out of that 
State last year 58,000 carloads of citrus fruits to regale the palates 
of our eastern friends. We sent out thousands of carloads of all 
kinds of deciduous fruits. The first fruits offered in your markets 
come from California. Our olives and our olive oil, our wines, our 
dried fruits, and our canned fruits go all over the world. Talk about 
carrying coals to Newcastle. My friend and colleague, Mr. Hayes, 
raises prunes down in the Santa Clara Valley that are sent to France 
and Germany, the original homes of the prune. That is the kind of 
State we have. Why, gentlemen, the possibilities are unlimited. 
And I venture the assertion that when this canal shall have been 
completed there will be lines of refrigerator ships — refrigerator 
ships, if you please — tliat Avill carry the fresh berries and the fresh 
plums, and apricots, and peaches, and pears, and prunes, and necta- 
rines, and cherries, and grapes right through the canal to the eastern 
seaboard, to Europe, and to the uttermost ends of the earth. So 
you see that California and the West are vitally interested in the 
completion of this canal — more so than any other section of the 
globe. The people of Europe, instead of coming over in steamers 
and settling m the congested sections of the East, will take passage 
at their home ports and sail through the canal direct to the West at 
a very small increase of cost over what they now have to pay in going 
to the Atlantic seaboard. They will go to the interior of the Pacific 
coast States and develop the West, because many of them come from 
those sections of Europe where the climate and the products and 
the flora are practically identical with the climate and the products 
and the flora of California. 

Now, so far as the position of New Orleans in this matter is con- 
cerned, we take it that she ought to be generons. She had an inter- 
national exposition in 1885. There has never been an international 
exposition on the Pacific seaboard; never. If New Orleans wanted 
a second international exposition she lost her opportunity (and they 
say opportunity knocks only once at every door) when she did not 
make the demand for the exposition in commemoration of the 
Louisiana purchase. Ihat was hers, hers by right, and she let the 
opportunity go by. What occasioned the purchase of the Louisiana 
Territory? New Orleans had been a port of deposit; trouble ensued, 
and in order to prevent any friction, President Ihomas Jeft'erson sent 
his agents to France in order to accomplish the purchase of what? 
Not the Louisiana Territory; not at all, but of the port of New 
Orleans. That is what he wanted, in order that his countrymen 
might go up the Mississippi River free and unhampered. But 
President Jefferson's agents purchased the Louisiana Territory, and 
if ever there was a single city in the United States that was entitled 
to have, and ought to have had, an exposition in commemoration of 



142 PKOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

that purchase it was the city of New Orleans. But she allowed a 
more vigorous rival to carry off the prize. 

Now, let me make this suggestion to our friends from New Orleans. 
This canal is being dug for the purpose of bringing the Pacific closer 
to the Atlantic seaboard. As my friend, Mr. Bell, stated the other 
day, the ocean waterway routes of the world will be changed, but it 
does not bring New Orleans one mile nearer to them. It brings the 
Pacific coast thousands of miles nearer to them. New Orleans will 
have another opportunity. Opportunity seldom comes twice to any 
community; in fact, I stated a while ago that the poet says it comes 
only once. But New Orleans has been the pioneer in the movement 
of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Waterway improvement. Some day that 
improvement will eventuate. It is bound to come. Then once more 
win come New Orleans' opportunity, unless she allows Pittsburg or 
Cincinnati or Louisville or some other enterprising city to again 
snatch the prize away from her. Gentlemen, get busy on that. It 
is worth reaching for. 

I said a while ago that there had been four international exposi- 
tions in the United States. Of course there have been many smaller 
expositions, but they were not international in character, and I do 
not refer to them; there were four so-called and recognized inter- 
national expositions. The first was at Philadelphia, the Centennial 
Exposition in 1876; the second was at New Orleans, on the Mississippi 
River, in the winter of 1884-85; the third was the World's Columbian 
Exposition at Chicago, in 1893; and the fourth was at St. Louis, the 
Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 1904. The amounts of money 
that were raised by the people and appropriated by Congress for the 
Chicago Exposition were about the same as the people of California 
and San Francisco have raised for their exposition. St. Louis, with 
what she raised and with what the Government loaned and gave her, 
had upward of $26,000,000 for her exposition. At Cliicago the paid 
admissions were 21,000,000; 21,000,000 paid admissions at Cliicago. 
The St. Louis Exposition, costing infinitely more, but farther south — 
farther south, if you please — had only 12,000,000 paid admissions. 
The St. Louis Exposition was the largest the world has ever seen. 
It covered 1,200 acres of ground. The exposition at Chicago was 
probably the most wonderful of all the expositions. It was superb, 
beautiful, magnificent. They were both in the Mississippi Valley 
region. They were aU held during the life of the present generation 
of people. They were right in the heart of this large population that 
the governor, and the mayor, and all the speakers from New Orleans 
have told us about. New Orleans at the very outside will have 
$10,000,000 for her exposition. She probably won't have that much, 
but at the most she will have $10,000,000. Do you think that the 

Seople of the Mississippi Valley are going to rush pell-mell down to 
ew Orleans in the heat of summer to see an $8,000,000 or a $10,000,- 
000 exposition, when only a few years ago they saw a $26,000,000 
exposition at St. Louis and a $17,500,000 exposition at Chicago? 
Why, it is inconceivable that men can seriously consider such a 
proposition, for New Orleans would have no attraction other than 
the exposition to draw anyone to her exposition. That is a serious 
matter, gentlemen, and deserves serious consideration. 

Now, some reference has been made here about her exposition in 
1885. That was only nine years after the Centennial. I do not 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 143 

know how much her people raised among themselves for that expo- 
sition. I have seen figures and estimates, but they are not very- 
accurate, so I will not attempt to quote them. However, the ex- 
position managers came to Congress and got $1,000,000 as a loan, 
upon the condition spoken of by my friend, Mr. Bell, the other 
day. As New Orleans has truly said, that has been written off the 
books. They were not compelled to return it unless they made 
profits, and as they made none, they do not owe the Government 
anything on that score. She also got $300,000 for a Government 
exhibit; and then, when it was all over, this being an international 
exposition, inaugurated by the Government of the United States, 
they had to come to Congress and ask for an additional appropriation 
of $350,000 to enable them to pay for the medals and prizes that had 
been won by foreign exhibitors, in order that the national honor 
might be maintained. That is the history of that exposition. We 
had to throw $350,000 of good money after bad money to maintain 
the national honor. And frankly, gentlemen, do you think that the 
people from the much-discussed centers of population are going to 
rush into New Orleans to see an $8,000,000 exposition when they 
had an opportunity to see a $17,000,000 one at Chicogo and a 
$26,000,000 one at St. Louis, both within a day's reach of New 
Orleans, as has been repeatedly stated here? I think not! 

There is no special attraction to draw anyone down to New 
Orleans. They say they will possibly hold their exposition during 
the winter, but that is the season of the year when the American 
people do not travel, and the people of the world do not travel. 
They talk about the idle rich going to expositions. The idle rich 
are the only people who can afford to travel in the winter time. 
Your workingman, your school-teacher, your clergyman, your 
lawyer, your doctor, your business man, your well-paid clerk — and 
they make up the large majority of those who go to expositions — 
can not afford to go in the winter. Their business ties them to 
their work; but it is in the summer time when they have their 
vacations and when the schools are in vacation that they go to 
expositions. 

Ah! yes, they make a great to-do about being near to the center 
of population. Why, if New Orleans is so very attractive, so very 
near, and the cost of transportation so cheap to get there, what 
will prevent anybody from going there at any time? We admit 
that the California trip is one to be thought of — ^to be looked forward 
to. We admit that it is some distance to get there, but that is what 
makes it all the more attractive. Let me tell you some things about 
the nearness of locations. Take some examples right here in the 
city of Washington. I will venture the assertion that there are 
thousands of people of the city of Washington who have never been 
inside that magnificent Congressional Library. I will venture the 
assertion that there are dozens of Members of the House who have 
never taken the trouble to go over there on Tenth Street to that 
little building in which the spirit of the immortal Abraham Lincoln 
winged its flight to heaven. I have been there a good many times. 
I have been there, but I am positive that thousands of people in 
Washington have never been there. 

Mr. WicioLirFE. I have been there, too, and I remember the 
street ; it is not Ninth Street, it is Tenth Street. 



144 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Ml'. Kahn. True; it is on Tenth Street. Now, take the top of the 
Washington Monument. There are thousands of people here who have 
never been there. Take the battlefield of Antietam, two hours' 
ride from the city of Washington, where took place the bloodiest 
battle of the Civil War. Dozens of Members of Congress have never 
been there. Gettysburg, four hours' ride away from here, where the 
valor of the South met the valor of the North on one of the most 
memorable fields in the world's history. How many of you Members 
of Congress have ever been there? And they are highly educated, 
representative people. 

Take the city of Buffalo, 18 miles from Niagara Falls. I will ven- 
ture the assertion that thousands of her citizens have never been 
to Niagara. It is the same all over the world. London, with her 
teeming millions, is only a few hours' ride from the birthplace of the 
immortal Shakespeare; yet millions of the London population have 
never been in Stratford-on-Avon. And why ? It is so very near that 
you think you can go there at any time. Who visit those places? 
The tourists ; the travelers ; the men who come from afar for the very 
purpose of visiting them. That is what makes the success of inter- 
national expositions. It is not their proximity. It is the attractive- 
ness of the exposition. And what in all the world is more attractive 
than a visit to the Golden West, with all its matchless wonders? 
My colleague, Mr. Hayes, spoke of those wonders, so I need not 
dwell upon that matter at this time. 

Now, a good deal has been said here about the high cost of getting 
to California; about its being the place where only the idle rich 
can afford to go. Let me read to you from the hearings a state- 
ment made by the president of the Tulane University, of whom I 
spoke a little while ago. This is his language, and there is not a 
Cahfornian in all the world that could put it any better than he did. 
He said: 

I can not boast that I am a son of California, but my father was one of the Forty- 
niners who lived a while in California, returning to Missouri via Panama and New 
York, and all his days he longed to return to California, to that enchanted realm, that 
realm of romance. 

That is the keynote. It is an enchanted realm, it is a realm of 
romance; a realm of adventure; a realm concerning whose wonder- 
ful scenery and whose great possibihties every schoolboy in the 
whole world has read; and I firmly believe that almost every being 
in the civiMzed world hopes some day to travel to that matchless 
realm. No wonder Dr. Craighead's father ''all his days longed to 
return to California." 

Why, take thai map that is beliind you, with all the indorsements 
that they speak of. If you were to put the question to the citizens 
of those communities and say: ''Gentlemen, you can have your 
choice of two trips — one to California by way of the Garden of the 
Gods, the Great Salt Lake, the Yellowstone National Park, the 
Puget Sound, Mount Shasta, the great, giant redwood forests, the 
big trees of Cahfornia, the Yosemite Valley, the beautiful Del Monte, 
the superb orange and citrus groves of southern California, the Grand 
Canyon of the Colorado — all to be visited during one round trip— 
or would you prefer to go to New Orleans ? " I venture the assertion 
that nine out of every ten would say: "For God's sake give me that 
ticket to California." 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 145 

And they talk about the fare. We are already assured that we 
are gomg to have a very low rate, and the school-teachers who want 
to go and the professional men who want to go, the clerg3mien who 
want to go, the well-paid clerks who want to go— for thousands of 
them, yes, hundreds of thousands of people, will want to go, not only 
from this country, but from all over the world — when these know 
that the Congress of the United States has authorized the President 
to extend an invitation on behalf of San Francisco to the countries 
of the world to exliibit at San Francisco — I say when that mformation 
goes forth to the world, if these people have not the price right at 
hand they will begin to save up in anticipation of making the trip. 
They did that in the case of Chicago; those who wanted to go to 
St. Louis did that. They began to put by so much a month, and 
travel clubs were organized to assist them; all over this country 
clubs were formed and monthly installments were paid, so that the 
cost of the trip would be provided for when the appropriate time 
arrived; and I apprehend there will be no difficulty for all these 
people to reach that promised land. 

Just to show you what has been done within the last few years in 
the matter of bringing people to California, I have here a telegram 
which is very instructive on that point. It is addressed to me, dated 
San Francisco, January 13: 

Reading John Sharp Williams";^ talk before committee in this morning's paper, 
wherein he ridicules idea that people will cross alkali plains to reach California, I 
send you herewith figures furni~hed by courtesy Mr. McCormick, of the Southern 
Pacific, which may be useful when you reply to his statement. Railroad statistics 
of conventions held on Pacific coast during recent years give following number \'is- 
itors crossing continent: Attend Christian Endeavor, July, 1897, 22,000 

Who are the Christian Endeavor Society people ? They are for 
the most part young people. They are not rich people. Most of 
them are clerks in stores, and young women who have to work for 
their living. They can only go during the summer months. That is 
the time when they have then vacations, and without any special 
inducement, but just A\ith a desire to go to San Francisco, 22,000 of 
them crossed the continent to be there in July, 1897. Let me read 
further : 

Epworth League, 1901, 14,000; Knights of Pythias, 1902, 15,000; Grand Army of 
Republic, 1903, 25,000. 

You gentlemen of the committee must know that the members of 
the Grand Army of the Republic do not make up the ranks of the 
idle rich in this countrj*. I do not think there is a member of this 
committee who will say that the member of the Grand Army of the 
Republic belong to those ranks. Most of them are poor, and yet, 
in 1903, 2.5,000 of them crossed the continent to be present at the 
annual encampment held in San Francisco that year; and, what is 
more, that was their second visit. They were out there in 1885, and 
thousands of them who went on that first occasion came back to 
their eastern homes, sold their lands, returned to the Pacific slope, 
and settled down in that section of California where the parents of 
my good friend Woods live, in southern California. They helped to 
build up that wonderful section of the State, these Grand Army men 
who went out there in 1885. 

Knights Templar, September, 1904, 20,000. 

And that was their second conclave in California. 
73172—11 10 



146 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Diiring 1905, 15 conventions attracted 122,000 people from the East, as follows: 
Women's Suffrage Association, American Library Association, American Medical 
Association, National Conference of Charities, National Irrigation Congress, Letter 
Carriers' Association. 

These letter carriers belong to the ranks of the idle rich, of course — 

Concatinated Order of Hoo Hoos, International Pressman's Union, American Sur- 
geons' Association, Theatrical Mechanics, Christian Church Society, Woodmen of the 
World, Knights of Columbus, W. C. T. U., Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In 
1909, year of Alaska- Yukon Exposition, 77,000 tickets were validated in California or 
stamped to make good for retm-n trip. In past eight years, 635,000 people have come 
to California on one-way colonist tickets via Southern Pacific alone. During 1910 
Southern Pacific sold following number of tickets from points at and east of Missouri 
River: Nine-months' round trip, 23,748; summer toiurist, 10,349; conventions, 13,484. 
National Educational Association has aheady convened twice in California and will 
hold convention here next July. International Sunday-School Association meets in 
California in June. As Southern Pacific handled about 70 per cent, these figures 
can be increased by about 30 per cent. 

Charles De Young. 

Now that shows how anxious the people are to go out to that 
realm of romance if they are given an opportunity. The fares on 
these occasions were, as a general rule, a one-rate fare for the round 
trip. We feel confident that with the opening of the exposition we 
will get a very much better rate than that. We feel confident that 
we will get an exceedingly low rate, one that will be within the reach 
of those educated, imaginative, cultured people, who want to come 
and see an exposition. You can not appeal to the uneducated, the 
imimaginative, and the phlegmatic, and interest them in an exposi- 
tion. There are only certain classes of people who go, and I appre- 
hend that nine out of every ten of those who want to go to an expo- 
sition will prefer to go to San Francisco. 

I want to refer to that map agam for a moment. You were told 
that no solicitation was made to procure those indorsements. We 
have copies of letters that were sent out by the New Orleans boomers 
(I think they did say, however, that some letters were sent), we have 
copies of resolutions that were sent to all kinds of organizations to be 
passed, and we have copies of the second letters that were sent 
when a reply did not come after the first letter had been sent, asking 
for an indorsement, in which the question was aslsed bluntly why the 
resolution had not been adopted. In addition to this letter-writing 
campaign, a notable pilgrimage was made to many eastern and middle 
western cities by the eloquent governor and the distinguished mayor 
of New Orleans; they stopped off at one town and at one city after 
another to arouse enthusiasm for New Orleans and to get these indorse- 
ments. 

I merely mention that in passing, to show that, after all, if you 
start out to get indorsements you can get them for almost any old 
thing. But we did not appeal in that way, because we felt we could 
present our case to Congress and get a fair decision. Members of 
the House have been appealed to in behalf of San Francisco by their 
constituents, and I want to say that that was propaganda work. I 
say frankly that those appeals were the result of propaganda work. 
WTiat is the use of trying to deceive the committee? As a matter 
of fact, many of those who made indorsements probably did not 
know that San Francisco was an aspirant for the honor, but the 
great commercial organization — in fact, one of the greatest in this 
country — the Business Men's League, of Chicago, with representatives 



PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL. EXPOSITION, 1915. 147 

in the North, in the South, in the East, and in the West, in every 
section of the country, debated the question fully and decided in 
favor of San Francisco, and the members of that organization are 
actively working for San Francisco even to-day. That indorsement 
was given after a full and fair discussion of the merits of the two 
places. 

Now what is the sentiment of the people of the two States on this 
exposition matter? I want to correct a statement that I made the 
other day. I said the California constitutional amendment was 
carried by a vote of 5 to 1. I took my statement from the news- 
papers published immediately after the election. Since then the 
official votes have been canvassed and by a vote of 3 to 1 the consti- 
tutional amendments carried in the State of California. The vote 
for the bonds in the city of San Francisco carried by a majority of 
20 to 1 . There were only two counties in the State of California that 
voted against the bond issue. There were 18 parishes, which corre- 
spond to our counties, in Louisiana that voted against the bond 
issue. Wliy, outside of the city of New Orleans, the majority for 
the Louisiana bond proposition was only 3,000. And do you think 
that people with such a lack of genuine enthusiasm that they vote 
bonds for the exposition by such a meager majority can be worked 
up into making a great international exposition an overwhelming 
success '? There is not one of you who believes that. You have to 
have enthusiasm in order to make your exposition a success. 

Out there in California the entire State is practically behind this 
proposition. Sirs, the statistics of the railroads and of the exposi- 
tions that have been held throughout the country show beyond per- 
adventure that 70 per cent of the paid admissions have to come from 
within a radius of 200 miles. You can not maintain a successful 
exposition if you have not the population within that radius that will 
support it to the extent of 70 per cent of the paid admissions. James- 
town was an example; New Orleans herself was an example in 1885. 

Mr. Bell pointed out to you clearly that masses of population do 
not make for success in expositions. Your near-by people must have 
means to go to it. They must be willing to support it. The stranger 
who comes from a distance is in a small minority, and he will go to 
that place which affords him the greatest amount of pleasure in his 
travels. There have been many expositions, not only in this coun- 
try, but throughout the world. The exposition itself is not sufficient 
attraction to draw hundreds of thousands of strangers. You must 
be prepared to show people attractions, going and coming, and there 
is no more attractive place in all the world than is the State of Cali- 
fornia, the State of Oregon, the State of Washington. 

We spoke here the other day about a great naval review; and 
there, again, New Orleans has been tagging behind San Francisco. 
We in California have been speaking of that for years. My first bill 
provided for it. Think of the pageant that will be presented when 
the battleships of the world, escorted by the Navy of the United 
States, will leave Hampton Roads, sail down to and through the 
canal, up the Pacific to San Francisco, there to be reviewed by the 
President of the United States. Incidentally, thousands of visitors to 
our exposition will come from the eastern seaboard, will come from 
Europe, and will take steamer direct through the canal to San Fran- 
cisco, and will find scenery en route that is not matched on any trip 



148 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

to New Orleans. They will see the volcano of Ysalco, the so-called 
lighthouse of Central America, visible miles out at sea, its molten 
lava running down its scarred face; the beautiful land-locked port 
of Acapulco, whence the Spanish galleons of old used to set sail across 
the Pacific to the Philippines and bring back the myrrh and franltin- 
cense and the spices of the Indies to the old Spanish viceroys. You 
continue within sight of the coast all the way up from Panama to 
San Francisco. Gentlemen of the committee, the spectacle of so 
many foreign ships of war convoyed by the Navy of the United 
States, entering the Bay of San Francisco in profound peace through 
the Golden Gate, will prove a pageant the like of which mankind has 
never before beheld. 

Wliy, when Admiral Evans, sailing on his cruise around the world, 
entered the Golden Gate, 1,000,000 people from San Francisco and 
its environs stood upon the hillsides, proud to acclaim that wonderful 
messenger of peace, the battleship fleet of the United States; and 
when that fleet, largely augmented as it will be by the fleets of the 
world, shall sail into that magnificent harbor on the 15th day of 
January, 1915, to participate in the exercises incident to the opening 
of the most magnificent of all the world's expositions — the Panama- 
Pacific International Exposition — its officers, together with all the 
world, will marvel at the pluck and the ability and the enterprise 
and the courage of the unoaunted people of the proud metropolis of 
the Golden State. I thank you. [Applause.] 

The Chairman. The committee will now be pleased to hear Gov. 
Sanders. [Applause.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. J. Y. SANDERS, GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA. 

Gov. Sanders. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, 
in as brief a way as possible I intend to answer some of the claims that 
have been made by our sister city from the West. I know that the 
task of answering my friends Kalm, Bell, Hayes, the Scott twins, 
and others, is going to be a very difficult one, but I intend to approach 
the discussion of our side with the friendfiest spirit in the world and 
only to say that which I feel is absolutely essential for me to say. 
I am a lawyer by profession and have plead some number of cases in 
various courts of various kinds, but this is the first case that I have 
ever been called upon to plead before any tribunal where my oppo- 
nents had neither petition or answer or intervention. Before this 
committee there is nothing for San Francisco; the only bill here pre- 
sented is the bill introduced by Gen. Estopinal, and Mr. Kahn, at his 
own request, at the opening of tliis discussion on last Monday or Tues- 
day, asked you not to consider his bill at all, but to let it die on your 
desks. I have been unable, from the beginning of the controversy, 
to keep up with the windings of my friends from Frisco. For gen- 
tlemen who have no bill at all to discuss I am frank to say they have 
put up a very lengthly and able discussion. My friend, Mr. Kahn, 
takes considerable umbrage at what he claims to call our tagging 
after Frisco. 

Now, whilst we do not admit the soft impeachment, yet if we have 
been tagging after Frisco it means we have been imitating her, and 
siQce imitation is the sincerest flattery it strikes me no San Fran- 
ciscan has any kick coming upon that score. But I do not think^we 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 149 

have tagged after San Francisco or have imitated her. We have not 
changed our position in this matter at alL We find Frisco occupy- 
ing the position, first, that they wanted a $5,000,000 appropriation; 
then we find them occupying the position that the}^ are wilHng to 
withdraw the bill; then we find them occupying the position of going 
before the Foreign Affairs Committee with a resolution asking the 
nations of the world to meet in their city; then we find them intro- 
ducing a bill before this committee; then we find ^Ir. Kahn in Con- 
gress, a few clays ago, stating they would ask for a governmental 
exhibit, and that possibly Congress would give as much to them as 
had been the habit of Congress to give in the past; then we find him 
here stating that their people and their State want no aid of any 
kind or description, nor do they even want a governmental exhibit. 

I confess that I have been unable to follow their positions. Our 
contention and position is that this is a national celebration. I 
come from a section of the Union that, unlike my friend from Cali- 
fornia, is not self-sufficient. We recognize the power and the glory 
and the force of the National Government. Some years ago we 
thought we were self-sufficient, but we have learned our lesson. 
California has yet to learn hers. We believe in the United States. 
We believe that this Government can not invite the nations of the 
■earth to make appropriations for exhibits unless the National Gov- 
ernment itself will have an exhibit. We can not conceive of any 
condition, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, that will 
permit tliis nation to ask the other nations of the earth to come to 
either New Orleans or San Francisco and exhibit their products 
unless Congress is willing to do the same thing. If you invite me to 
your home to dine, Mr. Chairman, I certainly expect your presence 
at the table, and when the Government invites the other Govern- 
ments of the world to be present at this exposition the other Govern- 
ments have a right to expect the presence, officially, of this 
Government. We do not ask for a subsidy. We do not ask for an 
appropriation. As I stated the other day, we were willing if, in 
your judgment, you desired to strike out the million dollars in this 
bill to have you do so, but we wanted it done with this understanding 
that we thought, and will always think, that it is the duty of the 
Government to provide for a governmental exhibit at any point 
where this fair shall be held. Less you can not do. More we do 
not ask you to do. 

I agree with my friend from Nevada that all this talk about money 
is vulgar, and I am frank to say that when he stated that he made 
the severest arraignment of the California argument that it is possible 
for man to make, for I have been deluged with the sound of jingling 
coin and rustling greenback since I first engaged in this controversy. 
Money talks, and God knows, in California it seems to outtalk any- 
thing else. 

If San Francisco and if California are what my friends Bell and 
Kahn and Hayes sa}- they are, and I do not doubt them for a minute, 
for my own eyes have beheld the beauties of that State; if they have 
the immense wealth, if they have the great resources, if they have 
the visitors daily and monthly to their shores, and they assure you 
that they have, Mr. Chairman, in all frankness, I submit to this 
committee that neither their State nor their city needs this exposition. 
We make no such ])retensions. We come frankly to this committee 



150 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSIliON, 1915. 

to say that we not only want it but we need it, and that the people 
of the United States need for us to have it. I do not mean when I 
say that we need it that we can not get along without it. I do not 
mean to say that our prosperity and our happiness depend upon 
whether we get it or not ; but I mean to say, as I said in the opening, 
and to reiterate here to-day, that the greatest asset of the United 
States to-day is the undeveloped resources of the South. We have 
never complained in our section of the country, nor do we ever 
intend to complain, about what any other section of the country gets 
from the Federal Government. My friend has stated that he and 
the California delegation waited on President McKinley at the close 
of the Spanish-American War to urge legislation for an interoceanic 
canal. Now, my friends, if he will examine the Congressional Record 
as far back as 1884, he will fmd the Louisiana Senators and Congress- 
men speaking for such a canal. It was never necessary for our 
delegation to wait on any President to assure him our position in 
this matter. 

Everybody in the United States knew that Louisiana stood for the 
Panama Canal, and that no Senator or Representative could have a 
seat in this Capitol and be returned here unless he stood for an inter- 
oceanic canal. It is true our people preferred the Nicaraguan route, 
but when the Republic of Panama was born, or was created, as the 
case may be, and when the treaty between the United States Gov- 
ernment and the Republic of Panama was pending in the Senate, 
upon the ratification of which treaty the very life of the canal itself 
depended, our legislature was in session down in my State, and by a 
unanimous vote of both houses we waived our preference for the 
Nicaraguan route, and instructed our two United States Senators to 
vote for the ratification of the treaty, and it was our instructions, and 
the Senators from our State carrying out those instructions, that 
made that treaty a possibility, and the canal a certainty. 

Some little discussion has been had and editorials have been read 
from two New Orleans newspapers. Neither editorial, as I think, 
represents our position before this committee. Neither one of them. 
As I just said, we are not self-sufficient; we realize our dependence 
in many ways upon the National Government. We are not seceding 
from the National Government on any question at all, not even the 
exposition question. We are staying right by it, and we want to 
confess judgment on the legal plea made by my friend Bell from Cali- 
fornia. Our constitutional amendments are so worded, and pur- 
posely so, that not one dollar is available unless we have the sanction 
of the National Government. It was done that way purposely, 
because we are not trying to hold a State fair in Louisiana, as our 
friends in San Francisco are trying to hold. 

We are not trying to hold a State fair of great magnitude, of course, 
but still a State fair. We are not trying to get along without govern- 
mental supervision or control, because when we offered to the nation 
our town as a situs for the exposition, and when the nation invites 
the people of the earth to that fair, the nation becomes the host and 
is accountable for the treatment that the nations get. We say we 
will provide the site and the money, and our bill provides that we do 
not get the fair until the Secretary of the Treasury is satisfied we have 
got the money. What guaranty have you got tliat you will ever get 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 151 

the money from California ? Not a challenge of the good faith of 
California, if you please. Not a challenge of the good faith; but I 
have been surprised and astounded to sit here for two or three days 
and to hear, Louisiana, her ability to pay, her willingness to pay, 
challenged by my friends from that State. I was perfectly willing 
to let the discussions rest upon the statements made b}'' solemn vote 
of the people of both Commonwealths, taking it absolutely for granted 
that both States would do what they said they would do; but since 
the good faith, the sincerity, and the ability of Louisiana has been 
challenged in this open manner it might be well to contrast what we 
come to you with and what our friends come to you with. We come 
to you with constitutional amendments, self-operative and self- 
enacting. Not one single line of legislation is needed in our State. 
Every function is provided for in the constitutional amendments 
themselves, and if you give us this fair, give us the location, our 
amendments become a contract between the State of Louisiana and 
the World's Panama Exposition Co., and the tax runs for no period 
of years; it runs long enough and until it shall have retired the 
bonds in principal and interest; on the other hand the California 
constitutional amendments places the money in the Treasury but 
does not draw it out. Ours do. 

Mr. Kahn. Do you object if I interrupt you ? 

Gov. Sanders. Not at all, sir. 

Mr. Kahn. I looked u]:) the matter after Mr. Covington had pro- 
pounded his question, and if the governor and committee will indulge 
me, I will read you and show you that your constitutional amendment 
does in express terms appropriate the money and turns it over to a 
commission appointed by the governor. The proviso that was read 
by Mr. Covington the other day has been construed by the courts in 
our State as being purely directory, not mandatory, and the money 
is specifically appropriated under the terms of the act: 

All moneys so paid int(j such fund are hereby appropriated, without reference to 
fiscal years, for the use, establishment, maintenance, and support of said Panama- 
Pacific International Exposition — 

And further on: 

The commission hereby created shall have the exclusive charge and control of all 
moneys paid into the Panama-Pacific international fund. 

Governor Sanders. There is no question of that, sir; but there is 
no c{uestion of the other fundamental legal fact, that that constitu- 
tional provision is governed and determined by the proviso that 
follows it, and there is not a lawyer on this committee, examining your 
constitutional amendment, but what knows that there is not a dollar 
available, except when the California Legislature shall make appropri- 
ation therefor. And, to the contrary, there is not a lawyer upon this 
committee but when he examines our constitutional amendment 
knows that it is self-operating aTid self-inforcing, because it says so 
eo nomine. Next, is there any sentiment in California as to whether 
my conclusions are right or not ? Yes, there is. I read from the 
Los Angeles Times, which, I am told, is a newspaper in C^alifornia of 
some influence. I read from an editorial of date January 1, 191 L 
I do not indorse the sentiments contained in this editorial. I know 
nothing about them. I am merelv reading this editorial to the 



152 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

committee to show you that the Cahfornians themselves take the 
same view of what the legislature must do as I take. This editorial 
reads as follows, in part: 

A constitutional amendment is not operative unless and until it is vitalized by 
appropriate legislation . It is not of itself a law ; it is permission to enact a law. Of the 
15,000,000 of State aid to the fair the people of the southern counties, where industrial 
freedom prevails, will pay $3,000,000. * * * They loyally voted the constitu- 
tional amendment to tax themselves for the benefit of the Bay City. 

Then it goes on here and says something about the local conditions 
over there, of which I know nothing. But it winds up with this 
threat : 

The members of the legislature may as well sit up and take notice. If they fail to 
do their duty, and to do it promptly, the fair may go to New Orleans. 

In other words, southern Cahfornia, that will pay $3,000,000 out of 
$5,000,000, serves notice on the Nation that unless certain tilings are 
done the breath of hfe will not be breathed into this constitutional 
amendment. In order that the very question asked by Mr. Covington 
the other day might not be asked of us when we came here we drew 
our constitutional amendments so that in the future, no matter what 
party or what faction, gets control of the State government of 
Louisiana, our constitutional amendment and taxes and bonds 
issued thereunder are self-operative, needing no legislation, and the 
tax will run indefinitely until it pays the bonds in principal and in 
interest. 

Now, the gentlemen from San Francisco say to the most powerful 
Nation and the richest people in the world: ''We are not going to ask 
you a dollar for your exhibit; not a shekel, not a ducat. You, the 
'most powerful people in the world and the richest on the face of the 
globe, shall not pay for your own exhibit." Then, in a burst of 
eloquence we are told that they are going to the States and to the 
municipalities and the other peoples of the earth and ask them to do 
that which they refuse to let jou do. They have said in their talks 
that they would even erect the buildings and pay for a governmental 
exhibit. 

Well, if they offer to do that for this Government, how can they 
fail to do it for all the other Governments of the earth ? If they are 
willing to pay for your exhibit, Mr. Chairman, why not for England 
and for Germany, for Spain, and for all the other nations of the earth ? 
Why ask France when they won't ask us; why ask Germany when 
they look with holy horror upon asking their own country? They 
say to Uncle Sam: "We will pay for you." Generosity of that iknd 
is aU-embracing, and they ought to pay for all the rest of us. I can 
not appreciate the sentiment that will indicate that the richest and 
the most powerful people in the world are going to be asked not to 
put up a dollar and yet that the moderate and less prosperous people 
are going to be asked to come across. If that is the sentiment that 
prevails in San Francisco and if that is the sentiment that prevails in 
California, then I suggest that they ought to publish to all the States 
of the Union and to all the peoples of the earth that "we have got 
so much in California that out of our abundance and our surplus we 
are willing to provide for you, the less fortunate people of the earth." 

And yet, with all this abundance, all this prosperity, all this wealth, 
they are not yet satisfied with what they have, and are seeking to get 
that which they have not, the exposition. Why do they want it, Mr. 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 153 

Chairman? It is going to be a burden on them. They can not 
accommodate the people who go there now. Men will be turned 
down; women and children are being crowded in sleepers and in day 
coaches. The alkali plains have vanished beneath the marvels of 
irrigation; all the peoples of the earth, east and west, north and 
south, are engaged in one mad rush for San Francisco! So be it. 
We glory in the fact. It is important if true. We glory in the fact 
that they have got all this, and then we add, if the}' have got all that, 
God- knows they have no need for the exposition. But if the people 
of even their neighboring States are rushing with such fervid zeal 
toward California, why is it that 100,000 farmers crossed the line from 
the Northwestern States last year seeking homes and habitations in 
Canada, carrying with them out of this country over one hundred 
millions of dollars ? Aye, if we can attract this people's eyes to the 
South and show them the wonders of our land and the possibilities 
that lie before them; if an exposition in New Orleans will do naught 
except stop the crossing of the borders of the North by these splendid, 
sturdy American farmers, keep their blood, brain, and brawn beneath 
the flag; show them land so rich that no man has ever dreamed of the 
possibilities thereof; show them a climate so sweet that there is not a 
day in the year they can not raise something for the market; tell 
them not to go to the frost of the North but come to the sunshiny of 
the South. If an exposition in New Orleans does naught but that, 
it shall have preserved to the Union hundreds of thousands of sturdy 
American citizens who are now seeking their homes beneath a foreign 
flag. 

Yes, the railroads are active. I was sought to be summoned as a 
witness for the defense a short while ago. I have said nothing about 
the transcontinental lines, but I here and now state that the back- 
bone of San Francisco's fight is the support of the transcontinental 
lines, and their support, of course, is not "pro bunko." is it? If a 
road leading from Chicago to New Orleans supports New Orleans it 
is held up to scorn, and denial is made of the transcontinental activ- 
ity, and yet the chairman of the publicity department of the World's 
Panama Exposition, located in San Francisco, is the highest official 
in the passenger department of the Southern Pacific system, Mr. 
Charles F. Fee. 

Mr. Kahn. If the governor will allow me — after the governor's 
visit to Mr. Lovett, the president of the Southern Pacific system, last 
September, Mr. Fee resigned from that position. 

Gov. Sanders. Just resigned from his position, but not from his 
activities. 

Mr. Kahn. Absolutely from his activities. 

Gov. Sanders. I state, sir, from the things that I know, that the 
great transcontinental systems are backing San Francisco, and I state 
that when San Francisco shall get this exposition, if she does get it, 
an additional tax will be placed on every man, woman, and child who 
attends that exposition. Talk to me of rates. Is it any more prob- 
able that San Francisco can get cheaper rates to an exposition than 
can New Orleans? This being true, San Francisco is five times 
farther from the center of population than is New Orleans, and it 
means that the rate, if equal in each instance, will be five times as 
much to Frisco as it is to New Orleans. 



154 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

We were urged to be generous by the gentlemen from California^ 
and to give them this exposition. From him that hath nothing, even 
the little that he hath shall be taken and given to him who hath. 
California has got it all, according to her own story, and her own 
song, and yet she wants more. 

We lost our opportunity in the St. Louis fair, says Brother Kahn. 
No; we did not. We know what we can do. St. Louis wanted that 
fair, and St. Louis was the largest city close to the geographical 
center of the Louisiana Purchase, and in all frankness we say that 
St. Louis was better equipped then to entertain the people of the 
world than we were, and we gladly gave our support to St. Louis. 
And we are told that perchance in this instance that all teachings of 
time are reversed, and hope is held out to us that opportunity does 
not only grow a forelock, but likewise a queue. For we are taught, 
you know, that you have to grasp opportunity from the front; but 
our friends state to us that we, having missed the forelock, wait and 
again opportunity will show us that she has an afterlock, and that 
sometime in the dim and distant future, when the waterways shall 
have been completed, we can then hold a fair. But I do not see why 
and how we can have any assurance of that. What assurance have 
we that if we come to Congress years in the future asking for a fair 
to celebrate the deep waterway from the Lakes to the Gulf, but what 
San Francisco will be here to fight us ? She is as close to the Missis- 
sippi River as she is to the Panama Canal. She is trying to take one 
away from us. What guaranty have we that she will not try to take 
the other ? She has no more logical reason for asking for the Panama 
celebration than she would have to ask for the celebration of the 
deep-water route. But she would come, and she would sing the songs 
of romance and of glory; she would tell of her golden mines and her 
golden fruit; she would tell of the struggles of her people and the 
wonders which thej have wrought and say to us: "It is not right to 
send the people down the mighty Father of Waters to see New 
Orleans; send them across the continent again, so that those who 
missed it before can see the Rockies and the Sierras and the Grand 
Canyon and the big trees and Mount Shasta and finally behold the 
Golden Gate." I know she would do it, because she is so enterprising 
and persistent. 

Mr. Kahn states that we made appeals for those indorsements. 
Certainly we did. We did not send out any sohcitors except Uncle 
Sam's mail, but we wrote letters for them, and we got them, hundreds 
and thousands of them, as indicated by the pins on that map back of 
you. Ah, but one, but one escaped us, and Kahn, in all his glory, 
brings that single indorsement before this committee and holds it up 
for the admiration of the world. One business league indorsed Cali- 
fornia. Therefore they must have it. The business league of Chicago 
indorsed San Francisco, and 37'et in our indorsements we find 94 from 
the State of Illinois and representing all of the biggest commercial 
bodies in that splendid State, 94 to 1. But that one, in the eyes of 
California, outweighs all the rest; one as against thirty-five hundred. 
And yet appeal after appeal has been made. Wliy, just the other day 
from a httle toMTi, a neighbor of ours, the mayor sent me a most 
pathetic appeal, which he had just received from the San Francisco 
people, begging for an indorsement. We have gotten them, we asked 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 155 

for them. There is no power in the world that could have made these 
business organizations, farmers' societies, and labor unions indorse 
us unless they had wanted to do so. 

Something was said about the vote in Louisiana and of the vote 
in California. Well, our constitutional amendments carried by an 
overwhelming majority, and I loiow that Members of Congress are 
not so particular about the size as they are about the fact of a majority. 
There was in my State, in the olden days, a system of electing circuit 
judTjes by the legislature, and when I was a very young man I went 
to the legislature and we held a caucus. I presume there is not a 
gentleman on this committee but what is familiar with the term 
"caucus," and I will not have to explain it. We held a caucus to 
determine as to whom would be our candidate for the bench. I 
was supporting one man. Naturally, I always support somebody. 
Immediately after the vote being taken I burst out of the door, 
ran up to my candidate all breathless and excited, and I said, ''You 
have won the nomination in the caucus, Judge, just by one vote." 
He was a very phlegmatic man; he looked at me and he said, "J. Y., 
are you certain I got the nomination?" "Oh, yes, Judge; you got 
it, but just by one vote." "Good night," he said, "I merely came 
up for the office; I was not hunting for majorities." Now, w^e got 
all the majority necessary to make this a living, breathing fact in 
Louisiana. But there is this distinction: In California the day that 
the California amendment was adopted was the same day that ours 
was adopted, and I have it from the very best authority — Brother 
Bell — that on that day there was a tremendous contest in California 
for all State officers and Congressmen. 

After listening to Brother Bell I can not conceive that every vote 
was brought out, judging from the result. But I believe every vote 
that was possible was gotten out, whereas with us on that occasion 
we had no contest at all. Our gubernatorial election does not take 
place for two years. Our nominations had already been made, and 
there being no opposition, a very small vote was polled. Now, it is a 
recognized fact that the kicker will go and vote against a tax; that is 
recognized everywhere. It was known from one end of Louisiana to 
the other that tlie overwhelming sentiment of our State was in favor 
of these constitutional amendments, and as there was no contest for 
office save seven Congressmen who were running without any opposi- 
tion in five districts, and very sliglit opposition in the other two, there 
was a very small vote polled, and even with that we carried the elec- 
tion by an overwhelming majority. 

Something was said by Mr. Bell about putting the burden of this 
tax on New Orleans. We did not put the burden of the tax on New 
Orleans; New Orleans, through her Senators and her Representa- 
tives, asked for that, and then by an overwhelming vote — only some 
seventeen hundred being cast in the negative, and many thousands in 
the affirmative — by an overwhelming vote adopted the constitutional 
amendments, and tliey by their local action have indorsed what the 
legislature did. 

There is one phase of the case that I want to discuss just briefly, 

and that is the labor question. It has been stated here that we were 

casting aspersions upon our labor; were saying that it was cheap, and 

hat I had said something about the cost of labor, and so forth. My 



156 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL. EXPOSITION, 1915. 

memor}^ may serve me wrong, but I do not think I said anything 
about the cost of labor. I did mention the cost of transportation 
and of material and of the cost of living being infinitely higher in 
San Francisco than it is in New Orleans, and I stand by that; the 
record bears me out. 

What is the condition of labor in San Francisco and Los Angeles 
and the labor conditions that prevail in Louisiana and New Orleans ? 
We read the papers, IVIr. Bell; we read the dispatches from San Fran- 
cisco and Los Angeles, and -we laiow that capital and labor are at 
each other's throats in that State, while down in Louisiana they dwell 
in peace and in amity, one with the other. We have no labor ques- 
tion, because our labor in New Orleans is well paid; paid better, in 
my opinion — the difference in the cost of living being considered — ■ 
better than it is in San Francisco. I say to Mr. Bell, with all the 
power I have, that it is true that labor is paid according to its effi- 
ciency, and it is not true that our labor is poor or inefficient. We 
have splendid labor in Louisiana, and it is well paid. Every paper 
published in the city of New Orleans is run by union labor. Can you 
say that, sir, of San Francisco ? Every nickel that is paid to a street 
car conductor in New Orleans is paid to a union labor man. Can you 
say that in San Francisco ? Our union people are contented, happy, 
and prosperous, sharing in all the good things that go to build up 
New Orleans. There is no antagonism with us between employer and 
emploj^ee; we do not have strikes and violence and affra3"s. When- 
ever there is a difference of opinion in New Orleans between an 
employer and the emplo3^ee the matter is settled by amicable discus- 
sion and adjustment, and it has been a number of years since we had 
a strike of an}^ moment or any importance, and we are proud of our 
labor, and prouder still of the spirit that pervades both labor and 
capital in the city of New Orleans. 

Mr. Bell. Will the gentleman yield for a moment to permit me to 
refresh his memory as to what he did say ? On page 17 of the trans- 
script of our copy of your statement I find this language attributed 
to you: 

The price of your labor, the price of your material, the price of your living is from 
•65 to 75 per cent greater than it is in the city of New Orleans. 

Gov. Sandees. Well, I am not responsible for what you have there, 
Mr. Bell, but I am going to read you from the official transcript. 

Mr. Bell. After it was revised or before ? 

Gov. Sandees. Certainly after it was revised; you have all revised 
yours, possibly. Let us read what was said. The best way to deter- 
mine it is to go to the record. 

Mr. Bell. The original record ? 

Gov. Sandees. Yes, sir; the original record. I think I can find it 
without verv much trouble; I have it right here. After discussing 
the $17,000,000: 

The cost of vour transportation, the price of your material, the price of your living 
is an average of from 65 to 75 per cent greater than it is in the city of New Orleans. 

Now that is the official statement as made by me, as I understood 
I was making it, Mr. Bell, and that is the statement I stand on and not 
the statement that you have just read, because I have stated repeat- 
edly and here state that our labor is better paid in proportion to the 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL. EXPOSITION, 1915. 157 

cost of living than is yours in San Francisco. And here is the indorse- 
ment that I will read, from the labor people of New Orleans: 

Hon. Martin Behrman, 

New Ehhitt House, Washington, D. C: 

Labor conditions in the city of New Orleans, and indeed throughout the State, both 
from the standpoint of the laborer and the employer are eminently pleasant and satis- 
factory, and it is equally so between the State and city authorities and the labor 
organizations. The selection of the city of New Orleans as a site for a Panama Expo- 
sition would be of inestimable benefit and advantage not alone to the general public, 
but very largely to the laboring man and all labor unions here. In the name of the 
labor unions which we represent we earnestly urge you to give your vote and influence 
for the location of the world's Panama Exposition at New Orleans. 

That telegram was sent by the labor union men of New Orleans. 
We got it since we have been here. 

Indorsements were received to-day from the International Union of 
Steam Engineers; that is not in our indorsements which we sub- 
mitted, but is an additional one, and also the United Master Butchers' 
Union of America. We have gotten indorsements from labor people 
after labor people. And as our condition and our position with our 
labor people are so pleasant and so satisfactory we do not want it 
misunderstood or misinterpreted. 

Something has been said about our 1884 fair. Mr. Chairman and 
gentlemen, that is the unkindest cut of all. If I could take this com- 
mittee back to 1884 and let them view the desolation and ruin that 
was our portion down in the State at that time they would wonder 
indeed that we had the grit and the nerve not to abandon the expo- 
sition in toto, for Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, the waters of 32 
States poured down upon us in Louisiana in 1884 and 1885; the 
mighty floods of the Father of Waters came from every section of 
this Union between the Alleghenies and the Rockies, poured their 
devasting waters upon us and when that exposition was held, the 
fairest, sweetest portion of our State was beneath the turgid tide 
of the Mississippi. Never in my opinion has a people or community 
showed more grit when they went on with the preparation for the 
fair despite the awful calamities that had come upon them. 

Frisco can not claim an equal degree of fortitude or of courage, 
because Mr. Kahn had introduced an exposition bill, and when the 
catastrophe overtook that city, they immediately abandoned all idea 
of an exposition. The catastrophe that overtook San Francisco, 
shaken as it were by the wrath ol God and swept by a hell of flame, 
had at least one redeeming feature. For the losses that you suffered 
nearly $200,000,000 of insurance was poured into the coffers of your 
city, but for the losses that were suft'ered in 1883, 1884, and 1885, 
when our property, our fields and farms and factories were swept by 
water, not one dollar of insurance came to our aid, IVIr. Kahn. Look 
at that map, see it marked out from away off yonder, going from 
Yellow Lake in Yellowstone Park, to Lake Chautauqua, in New York, 
they are the waters that drain on us, Mr. Chairman. Facing that 
situation we did not abandon the fair. We were used to adversity, 
used to hard times; we did our best. 

Whilst to-day you may find something charged on the books of the 
Treasury against some other fairs, though it has been repeatedly 
charged in your literature, Mr. Kahn, that we owe the Government; 
though every piece of literature you have gotten out has had it in 



158 PKOPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

blackface type, yet the Treasury books show that not one dollar is 
to-day due by the Cotton Centennial Exposition to the United States 
Government. And, gentlemen, the first Calif ornian who ever 
admitted it was my friend Mr. Bell when he opened this discussion 
for San Francisco last Thursday. 

Mr. Chairman, we have seen the arid lands of the West by irriga- 
tion made to blossom and bloom like a rose. And when our Con- 
gressmen and our Senators voted appropriations in order to place 
water on the arid lands and make them fertile we indorsed their 
votes with heart and act, but sometimes it has appealed to me that 
the millions that have gone to reclaim the arid lands of the West 
might well be duplicated by keeping the nation's waters off the State 
of Louisiana. Since the war we people in Louisiana have spent 
$50,000,000 of our own in diking and leveeing the Mississippi, until 
to-day we who live on her banks sleep in perfect security. That 
river flows from our northern boundaries to the sea and never wakes 
an echoing fear in the heart of any man. That burden we have 
assumed — taken our own money to keep your waters off our land — 
and we have seen the nation's money go to put water on the arid 
lands of the West, so as to make them fertile, and we think that in 
return some day you ought to put your money out to keep your waters 
off our already fertile lands. 

I have never stated that the tide of immigration was toward the 
South. I stated in my opening address that by your acts you might 
hasten or retard that day — that was my expression — but that you 
could not prevent it, and I reiterate what I believe with all the force 
that I have — that the tide of immigration is to-day turning toward 
the South and that when the limitless possibilities of that countr}^ 
shall open before our nation's view the most astounded people in the 
world will be the Calif ornians who, up to this minute, think that 
they are so self-sufficient. 

A great Chicago paper some time ago stated that if Louisiana could 
be placed, say, somewhere about Springfield, 111., along the route of 
the eastern and western travel, that her wondrous possibilities, her 
gigantic hidden wealth, would create a stampede for her only equaled 
by the stampede that took place to California when gold was dis- 
covered in the forties. And as we can not move Louisiana, and as 
we have no desire to move her, because we are perfectly satisfied with 
her location, to the route to be traveled we want to put the exposi- 
tion where the people can come and see what we and our neighboring 
States have to offer. Build up the great Mississippi Valley, which 
our friend Joe Scott advised so cocksuredly to neglect; he dismisses 
that wondrous section of this Union with the wave of his hand and 
indicates that the only thing necessary for man's happiness is to pay 
no attention to the Mississippi Valley and proceed ever westward 
until he lands in California, and then happmess is his. But if he 
landed there in California my opinion is that Joe would urge him to 
stay in Los Angeles rather than in San Francisco. 

After we shall have discussed one minute our bond issue, or have 
discussed it, let us go to the question of subscriptions. My friend 
Bell here seems to think that we have committed every crime in the 
calendar by getting our subscriptions in the form of notes. Well, now, 
in California it may be that in a great mass meeting where a man gets 
up and says: "Put me down for $10,000," and he is put down by the 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 159 

secretary, it may be that that is a better obhgation in Cahfornia than 
a promissory note is in Louisiana. 

Mr. Kahn. If the governor \vill allow me, they signed up right there 
at that mass meeting. 

Gov. Sanders. They could not have done it because my friend, 
Mr. Bell, was so "sot" against promissory notes, if they did, then he 
denounces his system when he denounces ours. 

Mr. Kahn. They were not in the nature of conditional notes. 

Gov. Sanders. Ours is a conditional promissory note, and I was 
taught early in life, in the study of law, that when you took a note 
you had better have a consideration for it, if you wanted to ever 
collect it. Our consideration is that the exposition ^vdll be located 
in New Orleans; they have no consideration for theirs and therefore 
legally the}^ are not collectible. 

Mr. Kahn. Stock of the corporation. 

Gov. Sanders. Oh, sure, stock of the corporation, for what pur- 
pose I do not know. We come to you not with S7, 500, 000 subscrip- 
tions, S4,000,000 of which was raised in two hours, 3^ou must have had 
a score of stenographers taking them down, because that is pretty 
rapid subscriptions, IVIr. Chairman, pretty rapid subscriptions, 
$4,089,000 in two hours; I do not see how they did it and we are 
pretty good movers down home ourselves. 

We bring you a certified list of our subscriptions, including the 
unfortunate $100 note that our friend Bell seemed to take such excep- 
tion to. But these gentlemen with their gold and their glories ought 
to remember that we have scriptural authority for the widow's mite 
being just as acceptable as the millionaire's contribution. We bring 
you m addition to that, and file with j'ou, a sworn statement from 
certified public accountants that they have examined into our notes, 
that they are bankable and collectible. Seven million five hundred 
thousand dollar's worth of enthusiastic promises ma;f be fulfilled, 
the chances are they will be fulfilled, but we have the dread example 
of St. Louis behind us, when the five or six million dollars that they 
raised in the same way, the records of the courts of St. Louis show 
the suits of that exposition company against those who had sub- 
scribed and they show judgments in favor of the defendants who, 
upon one pretext or another, got out of their subscriptions. In 
order not to be placed in this unfortunate position, we took the pre- 
caution of having ours in legal shape with a consideration; there is 
not a note that we have that is not bankable and collectible. 

Father McQuade, with an eloquence here that was beautiful, asked 
you all to remember his 6,500 mile trip, and to give him that exposi- 
tion as a reward for his services. Personally I would like to help 
Father McQuade, but it does look a little bit hard that 90,000,000 of 

Seople must be forced to go that 6,500 mile trip just to oblige Father 
[cQuade. Father McQuade likewise gave us a reason why the ex- 
position should be located in Frisco. Why, he says, "This is the 
place De Lessens established his headquarters when he went to build 
the canal." Yes; and he made a failure of it, too; he established his 
headquarters in San Francisco and he never even dug a piece of the 
canal; but when we took the headquarters away from San Francisco 
and established them right close to the city of New Orleans, why we 
are digging it, and the day is not far distant when the dream of De 
Lesseps will become the reality of Goethals, when the office estab- 



160 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAIi EXPOSITION, 1915. 

lished in San Francisco can look sadly back upon the flight of time 
and say, "If we had had niore judgment in selecting the place from 
whence we were going to direct the operations we might, too, have 
been successful in the digging of the canal." 

"Why, Mr. Chairman, they talk about beautiful winter trips. 
The other day, in tho paper I read this, under date of January 12 — 
that is since this hearing started: ''Alarm is felt by railroad officials 
for the safety of passengers and crew of Great Northern train No. 3 
and crew of fast mail No. 2 stalled in the snow near Montana. More 
than 50 persons are on the two trains; there is no diner on either. 
Both run through to the coast. The trains have been stalled since 
Monday." Four days afterwards this telegram was sent: "A blind- 
ing snow has raged for hours." That is a splendid service. Of course, 
none of us want to get lost. These are not local trains, they are 
through trains from St. Paul to the coast, both without a diner 
and both four days lost in the snow. Now, I have made the trip 
to California twice, one by the southern route and once by what 
we might call the Oregon Railroad & Navigation route up to Port- 
land and then down the^ coast. I ami like Brother Hayes; I am 
hardened to travel. He has made the trip one hundred times and 
does not mind it. Well, a man, gentlemen of the committee, can 
get used to anything. I have made it twice and did not kick very 
much on either occasion, but T can not say that I enjoyed either trip. 

Now, we propose under our plan, if tliis fair is held in New Orleans, 
to run it 12 months in the year, not a winter or a summer fair, but a 
year's fair, and we think it will take about a year for the people of 
the country to show us what they have got and for us to show them 
what we have. We are told by Mr. Hayes that the Pacific coast has 
never had an international exposition. I am frank to confess, after 
Hstening to the arguments here, that she never wants one, because 
every orator absolutely makes the statement that they do not want 
the Government to have anything to do with this fair. If the Gov- 
ernment has notlung at all to do with it, then it is neither a national 
nor international fair. They propose to hold a great State fair like 
that which is held in Minnesota, in the North, and- at Dallas, Tex., 
for example, in the South — a great State fair. Eead their last circu- 
lar. They say there is no conflict between our bill and theirs; they 
say their biU properly went to the Foreign Affairs Committee; they 
say they do not ask Congress to create any exposition at San Fran- 
cisco; they do not provide for the appointment of any commissioners. 
That mere statement is a radical difference between the expositions, 
and is sufficient to dispose of any conflict of jurisdiction here. Her 
sole aim is to secure upon the floor of Congress at an early date a fair 
and impartial consideration of the claims of the rival cities. For 
what, according to her own statements? For two distinct and 
irreconcilable ideas of fairs ? There can not be a settlement, there- 
fore, between rival cities, because there is no rivalry at ah between 
San Francisco and us. We want a great national and international 
fair; San Francisco does not want it and says so through the mouths 
of her chosen speakers. 

The ignorance of Mr. Hayes on certain questions is starthng. I 
admired his speech and admired it more because he spoke of the nar- 
rowness of us of Louisiana. Now, of course we may be narrow, but 
have got good eyesight. And some of the things that New Orleans 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 161 

is famous for is our trained physicians, and we have in New Orleans 
some of the most famous ocuhsts on the American continent. This 
exposition ought to be sent to New Orleans if for no other reason than 
that Hayes might come down there and have his eyes treated. He 
stated to this committee that all Iris life he had'never seen a mosquito 
in San Francisco; yet I read from the San Francisco Call of date of 
July 22, 1910, this : "Send me a policeman," was the message received 
over the telephone yesterday morning at the Potrero Station. "Who 
are you?" asked the policeman who responded. "I am Mrs. Grace 
Dougherty, 78 Twenty-eighth Street," was the reply, "and I am 
being eaten up by mosquitoes. I want an officer to help me drive 
them away." 

The Chairman. What time of day was tliis ? 

Gov. Saunders. This was "yesterday morning; " that was July 21, 
1910. On that morning Mrs. Grace Dougherty, of 78 Twenty-eighth 
Street, had to call for police protection against mosquitoes. I have 
been governor of Louisiana for about three years; my friend, Martin 
Behrman, has been mayor of New Orleans for about eight; I have 
been connected with the State government for a number of years in 
various capacities, but never yet, Mr. Chairman, has the militia or 
the police of my city or State been called out to protect our people 
from an invasion by mosquitoes. 

Everybody wants to go to San Francisco, yet we read from the 
Call again — this paper seems to be very enterprising — a special dis- 
patch from Washington, dated July 23, last year. You know that if 
there is anybody in the world that is used to hardships and used to 
being in all kinds of places under all kinds of circumstances it is the 
Army and Navy officers of our country. They face danger alike in 
the frozen north and in the Torrid Zone. They risk their lives w^her- 
ever sent without a question and without a thought, knowing if they 
die the Government stands behind the widow and orphan, knowing 
if they live, honor and glory is theirs, no matter what the danger may 
be. Now and then we find a man, though, so appalled by danger, 
so awe-struck with the horrors of the task that has been imposed upon 
him that his very soul flinches from the ordeal, and he will not go. 
So the other day this was given out, it was July 23 of last year, in 
the Call: 

Rather than go to San Francisco, Col. Frank Denny, of the Marine Corps, will retire. 
Denny has been attached to headquarters here for 30 years, latterly as chief quarter- 
master. He is one of the seven Marine officers recently censured for creating dissen- 
sion at headquarters, and as a further mark of official displeasure Denny was ordered 
to San Francisco to take charge of the supply department. This was too much for 
him and he threatens to retire. 

This was too much for Denny and he resigned. He says: 

Go to San Francisco! Not on your life. If they think they can send me to that 
God-forsaken dumping place to get rid of me, they are mistaken. I would not go to 
San Francisco for any money. They ordered me there to humiliate me, but I will 
retire before I go. 

Mr. Kahn. Did you say he resigned ? 

Gov. Sanders. He said he would resign, and the newspapers finally 
said he did resign. 

Mr. Kahn. He is in San Francisco now. 
Gov. Sanders. Is he ? 
Mr. Kahn. Yes. 

73172—11 11 



162 PEOPOSED PANAMA CANAL. EXPOSITION, 1915. 

Gov. Sanders. God help him. For a man that feels that way 
about it, Mr. Chairman, nothing but the strongest sense of duty would 
have made him face the dangers of that awful town. 

Brother Hayes referred to us in a most outrageous manner as a 
land of swamps and levees and mosquitoes. Well, I think I have 
stated something of the mosquitoes of his own town and have brought 
his own paper as a witness. We might perchance — because all of 
us who have been there have experienced the attentions of them — 
speak of the wicked flea whom no man pursueth or can pursue. We 
might talk, when we hear Hayes speak of the beautiful climate of 
San Francisco, of the haze, or the fogs, which we met when we walked 
down Market Street, when an umbrella was no protection because it 
soaked in from the sides. When I heard him describe the magnificent 
climate of San Francisco I knew that he must have meant Los Angeles. 
I have been to both cities, and I will tell you there is- not a city in the 
world, in my opinion, that has got a better climate than Los Angeles, 
nor one that is worse than San Francisco. 

Hayes says the people do not want the exposition in New Orleans. 
Turn around and look at those black spots; about 15,000,000 people 
are better able to state what they want than is Brother Hayes. He 
says our hotels in 1884 were bad. He speaks of stopping at the St. 
Charles Hotel. Why, the St. Charles Hotel that he stopped in is 
nothing but a memory of the past; years ago it burned down and on 
the ashes of that old ante-bellum hostelry has risen one of the most 
modern up-to-date and splendid hotels that this Nation can boast of. 
The manager of that hotel, the president of the company is here, and 
he says that I can state authoritatively to the committee that he 
and his fellow hotel proprietors obligate and bind themselves before 
the American Congress that if they get this exposition there shall be 
absolutely no increase in any rate that is now prevailing. San 
Francisco claims to have 1,250 hotels. We are not in that class; I 
do not know of a city in the world which is. If you count lodging 
houses, if you count boarding houses, sure we have a great number. 
Oh, no, no, that is not our boast, 1,250 hotels; we have not that many, 
nothing like it, yet we have got three or four or five great, big, modern 
hotels, modern in every particular, and thousands of homes in that 
city that for generations past have been used, on all public occasions, 
to throw their doors open to the strangers that are within our gates. 

We have been hearing a great deal about the growth of California. 
How about the growth of San Francisco ? It has not increased any- 
thing like in proportion 

Mr. Kahn. Will the governor permit me one moment in that 
regard? If the metropolitan area which is embraced in San Fran- 
cisco were included, we would have 633,000 people and would be the 
fifth city in the Union; but San Francisco has never reached out as 
Pittsburg and taken in the suburbs, or Buffalo, or Cleveland, or 
those other cities, but we have a metropolitan area, as shown by the 
present census, of 633,000 people. 

Gov. Sanders. She has never reached out? I read an editorial 
the other day in a leading paper of Oakland, across the bay, in which 
that paper said, representing the people of Oakland, that they would 
die before they would be united with San Francisco. I never in my 
life read such an arraignment in such terms by a neighbor who ought 
to be a friend, as I did in that Oakland paper, in talking about the 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 163 

effort being made to incorporate it and other cities into greater San 
Francisco. And it seems to think that force of arms would be justified, 
if necessary, before they woukl be incorporated with the city of San 
Francisco and hve vmder her government and with her people as one. 

Mr. Kahn. If the governor will permit, I did not say we are going 
to annex them; I said there was a metropolitan area there. 

Gov. Sanders. I am forced to the conclusion, after reading that 
editorial, that you are not going to annex them. But be that as it 
may, my friend Kahn is as prolific of excuses as the trees of Hayes 
from the same State are of prunes. I am not responsible for the 
size of San Francisco nor for the fact that her neighboring towns do 
not want to get in her midst. I am fighting the fight of Oakland 
and the other subiu-bs. None of us want to get in her midst. Her 
increase is only 21 per cent in the last 10 years, just like ours. And 
the census, was it padded? Oh, no, says Kahn. In connection 
with the announcement of the population of San Francisco, the 
Director of the Census stated that the original returns of the enumer- 
ators contained 420,234 names, but of these, on investigation by the 
Census Bureau, 3,322 were eliminated as not entitled to enumeration. 

He goes on and then gives why they were ehminated; they elim- 
inated 3,322 names that were returned. You can explain it as 
much as you want, Mr. Chairman, but the fact remains that more 
names were returned than the Census Bureau would stand for. That 
is official; I have just gotten it from the Census Bureau. Now, as 
to the school statistics of San Francisco. In 1909 the number of 
famihes hsted— and I take this from their own California school 
report — the number of famihes hsted in San Francisco, having chil- 
dren of school age, were 50,654, and in 1910 the number of families 
had decreased to 46,766, or a loss in famihes, not persons, of 3,888; 
that is a loss in one year. In 1909 there were in San Francisco, of 
children between the ages of 5 and 17, 88,058, and in 1910 the num- 
ber had decreased to 74,729, or a loss in one year of school cliildren, 
according to their own report, not of those who attended, but all 
school children between the ages of 5 and 17, of 13,229. In 1909 
there were 60 men high-school teachers and 59 women school-teachers, 
a total of 119, while in 1910 the high-school teachers had decreased 
to 109; they had lost 10, a reduction in their high schools alone of 
10 teachers. 

San Francisco may be a wonderful city, and undoubtedly is, but she 
has not kept time and step with the development of the rest of Cali- 
fornia, according to her own figures. 

Now, I want to show you some pictures. I want to show you a 
picture of a Mardi Gras scene in our city. Thsy speak of it as an 
unusual thing. Here is a night scene. A¥liat is that ? Just one of 
our regular Mardi Gras scenes any night during the Mardi Gras. 

Mr. CuLLOP. What time of the year was that ? 

Gov. Sanders. This was taken in February, during the Mardi Gras 
time. This is a picture showing the distance from the various centers 
of the United States to New Orleans, and that picture I would like to 
file with the committee. We have been referred to so often as an 
inland city. I w^ant to show you the great battleship Illinois in a 
floating dock. United States dry-dock at New Orleans, the biggest dry- 
dock in the world, the biggest floating dry-dock in the world is right 
there in the city of New Orleans. Here is a scene on our river front 



164 PROPOSED PANAMA CAISTAL EXPOSITION", 1915. 

where the vessels clock right up against the bank. Here is the dock 
board's property. There is the belt line owned by the municipality 
and tlie docks owned by the city; the depth of water there where 
these ships are is over 100 feet. 

Then I want to show you another picture; that is our ocean-going 
traffic; here is our river traffic, where the steamboats land that ply 
up and down the Mississippi Kiver. Talk about our being an inland 
city, Mr. Chairman, I have seen the great battleship Mississippi go 
up that river for 200 miles above New Orleans, anchor in midstream 
in front of Natchez, and I have seen it come down from Natchez to 
New Orleans and make the run on that inland sea faster than it ever 
had been made before on the river, and the horns were presented to 
Capt. Fremont. Why, the great battleship Idaho is going up to 
Vicksburg this winter. The mayor of that town, accompanied by a 
delegation, got the Secretary of the Navy to agree to send the Idalio 
to Vicksburg. The biggest ships that float can come up to New 
Orleans and do come iip to New Orleans. New Orleans an inland 
city! Then, indeed, is Liverpool, and London, and Manchester, and 
New York, and every other great port in the world almost, because 
practically in every one of them you have to leave the ocean and go 
up a river many miles to the city itself. Five hours' time is consumed 
from the time we enter the mouth of the river until we tie up to the 
docks, and I have seen a sight in New Orleans that I have never seen 
anywhere in the country. I have seen a United States battleship 
of the latest make and biggest pattern tie up to our docks, and at all 
other places I have seen them anchored in midstream; I have seen 
the battleship tied to the wharf itself. 

Now, I have a word to say about Central America. The trade of 
Central and South America, gentlemen of this committee, is what we 
want, what we need, what we must have. "The trade of Central and 
South America," they say, ''why have you not gotten it before ?" I 
am quoting from the Government statistics ; I am going to use round 
figures in order to get through. The foreign trade of South and 
Central America is over $2,000,000,000; America has only about 10 
per cent of it, the rest going to Europe. We have in New Orleans 70 
per cent of that 10. The entire trade of the Pacific coast from Puget 
Sound down, foreign trade, last year was $156,000,000, and the trade 
of New Orleans alone, foreign, was over $200,000,000. The foreign 
trade of the Orient is something over $1,000,000,000, $1,500,000,000, 
stated by Mr. McKinlay, and we will let it go at that. The foreign 
trade of Central and South America is $2,000,000,000. They say 
to us: "We have got 10 per cent of that." The United States has 
got less than 10 per cent of the foreign trade of the Orient. They 
twit us with the fact that the Gulf of Mexico is as deep to-day as it 
was 200 years ago, and why have we not the trade? Well, I have 
not heard of the Pacific Ocean being dredged, Mr. Bell; it is just as 
deep to-day as it was 200 years ago. Why haven't you the oriental 
trade ? We have got more of the Central American trade than you 
have of the oriental trade. 

Mr. Bell described the voyage of a vessel from Liverpool through 
the Panama Canal up to San Francisco and then to Hongkong. A 
voyage of that kind would only be undertaken for pleasure, because 
♦f you just examine the map a little bit you will find it is 4,000 miles 
longer from Liverpool to Hongkong that way than it is from Liver- 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915, 165 

poolfto'jHongkong through the Suez Canal, and no freight vessel is 
going to take that 4,000-mile trip for fun. They state that Japan 
and China want to trade with friendly people and friendly countries. 
The great shipments out of San Francisco now, Mr. Chairman, to the 
Orient are things we produce in the Mississippi Valley. Your trade 
to-day with the Orient is the stuff that we have produced in the 
Mississippi Valley, shipped to San Francisco on the transcontinental 
lines and^ thence to the Orient. Whereas if you open this canal and 
have the exposition at New Orleans ships of China and Japan can come 
to New Orleans and the Mississippi Valley can send its products 
down the waterways ; not a pound of that freight need pay tribute to 
a railroad; loaded"^ on the river on barges, brought down to New 
Orleans, transferred from the barges to ships and go direct to Japan 
and to China. If it is true, as Messrs. McKinlay, Bell, and others said, 
that these people like to trade with friendly people, then there is no 
reason why they can not trade with us; we have no antipath}-; 
there is no unfriendliness to them at all. 

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Bell stood there the other day and painted a 
picture of San Francisco looking out over the brooding Pacific and 
wondering of the things to come. He drew a beautiful picture of 
California. There is not a thing that can be said about that State 
that I am not walling to indorse and agree to, but you must not think 
that God exhausted all liis favors when he created San Francisco 
and California. We people in Louisiana think of some of the beau- 
ties of the country ourselves and know some of the things we have. 
We can take a man and bring him down to the mouth of the mighty 
Father of Waters, let him look out over the Mexic Sea, not brood- 
ingly, but in a reminiscent mood, remember the voyage of Cortez, 
the discovery of the great river by De Soto, then he can face to the 
north and see La Salle and Pere Marquette, the great priest, tread- 
ing the forests of the north, discovering the Mississippi in its entirety. 

Ours is not a country of swamps and bayous; we can show him 
one sulphur mine that produces more sulphur every day than all 
the rest of the world combined; we can show him four salt mines 
that turn out as much salt every day as all the rest of the Union 
put together; we can show him forests of pine and cypress the like 
of which is not upon the American continent to-day. Only a short 
distance from New Orleans is one sawmill alone, the greatest sawmill 
the w(3rld has ever seen, built of concrete, steel, and stone, that turns 
out some 700,000 feet of sawed lumber every day. We can show 
him the cane fields of Louisiana, for we stand first of all the States 
in the production of sugar; we can take him farther west and show 
him the green fields of rice, for we stand first in the production of 
rice; we can take him a little farther north and show him our truck 
section. Truck. Ah, California talks of competing with us in 
truck. Why, there is not an acre of land in California, and never 
has been, and under God's providence never will be, that can com- 
pare to the trucking lands of Louisiana. And we get it not from 
our home people; the other day we took a crowd down to look at 
some of the lands in our State, and along with the crowd was a 
chemist from the great State of Ohio, the chemist of their State 
University, and after making an examination of the soil and making 
an analysis thereof, he gave us a certificate, which we have published, 



166 PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 

that that soil would produce a crop of between 60 and TO'^jbushels 
of corn to the acre for a thousand years without fertilization 

There is absolutely nothing in the State of California that compares 
with that. Write to Mr. William Hostetter, at Roseland, La. He 
had 1 acre of cauliflower last year from which he cut and sold over 
$2,400 worth of cauliflower. There is no acre in California that can 
touch it. We have truck farmers in that section of the State whose 
farms yield from S600 to $2,000 gross to every acre that they culti- 
vate, and we are bringing the people of the West and of the North in 
there every day, and we want to hasten that time. Talk about sen- 
timents crossing the alkali plains. Think of the sentiments that cling 
and cluster around the city of New Orleans. Oh, if you bring this 
fair there in 1915 you bring it there 50 years after the Blue and the 
Gray have ceased to be ; you bring it there on the fiftieth anniversary 
of the declaration of peace between the striving brothers of this land. 
We have, in our executive committee, agreed to invite both the United 
Confederate Veterans and the Grand Army of the Republic to hold 
their annual reunion in New Orleans on the date of this fair. 

What more historic spectacle than to see marching down our 
beautiful thoroughfares in that historic city the remnants of those 
gallant armies; what more could make every American say that he 
is proud of the valor of his people ? Then, it is the one hundredth 
anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, when Andrew Jackson, 
marshaling the men of the Middle West and of the Mississippi Valley, 
there upon the Plains of Chalmette showed to the world that the 
citizen soldiery of America could hurl back in utter rout and confu- 
sion the legions that had conquered imperial Napoleon himseK. 
Aye, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, we can view the battlefields 
where we fought together and where we fought apart. Louisiana, 
rich in her glorious history, proud of the traditions of the past, still 
looks to the future with more confidence to-day than any other 
State in the Union. 

Over our people have floated many flags of many hues. First the 
intrepid French, discovering a wilderness, brought to the western 
breeze the fleur-de-hs of the kingly house of France, and when 
politics were played across the ocean that flag came down to be 
supplanted by the yellow banner of Spain, and the haughty Spaniard 
came to mingle his blood with that of France. And when the great 
Napoleon hauled down the yellow banner of Spain and hoisted over 
our people the tricolor of the French, then the master mind of Jefferson, 
grasping the opportunity thus presented, the tricolor was itself 
furled, and over our people floated that flag which made that great 
river flow from the Lakes to the Gulf through a country wholly 
American. 

We have got a people down there whose history of the past reads 
like some romance of old. We have got a city where the main street 
divides memories of old Paris and ancient Madrid from busthng, 
hustling modern America. Let us take this exposition to that old, 
that new city; that city where the romance of the old meets and 
mingles with the realities of the present; that city where French, 
Spanish, and American has each given of his best in order to build 
a great modern, hustling mart of commerce. Mr. Chairman, that 
city, above all things else, willing to entertain, anxious to entertain; 
that city wlierein the mad chase for golden coin still gives us pause 



PROPOSED PANAMA CANAL EXPOSITION, 1915. 167 

for the sweet courtesies of life. I thank the committee foi- its con- 
sideration. [Applause.] 

Mr. Kahn. I lasij upon reflection desire to file with the committee 
as part of my remarks on behalf of San Francisco some newspaper 
clippings from Louisiana papers showing how the mosquitoes even 
drove the wild animals out of the swamps of Louisiana. 

The Chairmax. This concludes the hearings upon bill H. R. 29362. 
On behalf of the committee I want to congratulate all of the speakers 
upon the uniform courtesy and. good feeling that has characterized 
these hearings. I want to say further that it is the intention of the 
committee to act in this matter just as speedily as possible. Several 
members of the committee are unavoidably absent from the city; 
they are expected back some day this week. As soon as the hearings 
can be printed and made available for their use the committee will 
be called together for final action. I hope that this may be some 
time during this week. The committee now stands adjourned sub- 
ject to call. 



